Meteomatics AG

Meteomatics specializes in high-resolution commercial weather forecasting, power output forecasting for wind, solar and hydro, weather data gathering from the lower atmosphere using Meteodrones, and weather data delivery via the Weather API.

Data Gathering

Meteomatics combines current and historical weather data from various sources worldwide, including weather models, satellite data, precipitation radar information, ocean data, and station observations. Furthermore, the company develops and manufactures autonomous weather drones – called Meteodrones – which fly up to 6 km above ground level to collect data from the planetary boundary layer. With special permission from the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, Meteodrones can fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), allowing Meteodrones to collect data even inside clouds and fog. Meteomatics integrates the data collected by Meteodrones into the calculation of their EURO1k weather model, providing even more precise and reliable forecasts.

High Precision and Hyperlocal Forecasting

Meteomatics' EURO1k weather model boasts a unique 1km resolution, providing accurate weather forecasts throughout Europe, tailored for various sectors. Furthermore, the weather API technology employs 90-metre downscaling using NASA's digital terrain model, enabling Meteomatics to provide hyperlocal forecasts globally. To guarantee the most precise forecasts, Meteomatics calibrates the models with the latest weather data measured by global weather stations, thus optimising the model output.

Super Computing and Data Processing

Meteomatics’ database contains over 15 petabytes of weather data. The company uses a sophisticated background caching system, Meteocache, to store vast amounts of observations, enabling their Weather API to recalculate forecasts in real-time using the latest atmospheric information. The Meteocache system matches data in time and space, to ensure that even large data sets can be efficiently and quickly queried in any format.

Additionally, Meteomatics also develops and maintains a high-performance computer cluster, built with 40’000 CPU cores, to calculate their high-resolution weather model, EURO1k, within one hour.

Implementation

Meteomatics offers free connectors on Github for multiple programming languages, including MATLAB, Python, R, and more. The information obtained through the Weather API can be output in various formats, such as CSV, XML, JSON, and NetCDF. The data's WMS/WFS capability enables integration into visualisations.