Monthly Weather Bulletin - what happened?

DumbBrunette · 20-03-2018 6:30pm #1

Does anyone know what happened to Met Eireann's monthly weather bulletins? All I can find on their website is the (relatively) boring monthly summaries - have they stopped producing the bulletin magazine? Or have they stopped making it available for free?

sryanbruen · 20-03-2018 6:44pm

DumbBrunette wrote: »

Does anyone know what happened to Met Eireann's monthly weather bulletins? All I can find on their website is the (relatively) boring monthly summaries - have they stopped producing the bulletin magazine? Or have they stopped making it available for free?

You can find them in the archive section of the monthly weather reports page. They have not done them on months past December 2015 though which I do not understand and find a bit annoying since I enjoy looking at them.

I do not like their changes to the monthly weather reports page over the years, they seem to make it more confusing for me to navigate through.

sryanbruen · 20-03-2018 8:30pm

If I were to work in Met Éireann, I would ask to be the one in charge of the weather history parts of the website which I would try and massively improve. The site needs a complete overhaul, this is 2018, not 1988.

How limited their data is to the public domain and or scarce on their website in great depth - I need to look through long excel documents of multiple stations just to find certain figures - for a weather historian like myself whom is fascinated in every way for such is very unnecessarily tedious.

I do articles from time to time in the Irish Weather Statistics thread. I do these with the information I can find online - would be great if I could look into the actual data at Met Éireann. I do them randomly because I try to think of historical months or periods or spells etc that you find interesting and or willing to read. Giving thanks on my posts always lets me know you enjoyed it or appreciate my work along with motivating me to continue to further my posts. The articles are made as trips down memory lane or either getting to know events you may have not experienced because you weren't alive then etc. This is meant to be the library for all weather historians of Ireland and or the UK - at least that's what I aimed it to be. I continue to provide the best content I can with making interesting facts, tables etc using the data I have. That January daily temperature records table to this day is the most tedious thing I have ever done in my life, had to go through as much of Met Éireann's stations' historical data as possible and look at the maximums and minimums of every single January in their records, add the record onto the table if it is a record for Ireland. I wanted to do this because the UK has their own but Ireland doesn't.

I've been saying that I've been working on a November/December 2010 article for months now and continue to do so because these months were so special and remarkable that I want this specific article to be as in-depth and detailed as possible including outlooks, warnings, day to day summaries, facts, statistics and so on. In terms of the outlooks, I'm always willing for some help because I was not here on the scene in 2010 with the models though I did make very amateur forecasts at the time.

sdanseo · 20-03-2018 8:38pm

sryanbruen wrote: »

If I were to work in Met Éireann, I would ask to be the one in charge of the weather history parts of the website which I would try and massively improve. The site needs a complete overhaul, this is 2018, not 1988.

It is in dire need of an upgrade alright, but the internet wasn't a pleasant experience for anyone in 1988. Or 1998 for that matter :pac:

Might offer to build them one using wordpress for an extortionate public service fee. It'd be a significant improvement.

Gaoth Laidir · 20-03-2018 9:03pm

sdanseo wrote: »

It is in dire need of an upgrade alright, but the internet wasn't a pleasant experience for anyone in 1988. Or 1998 for that matter :pac:

Might offer to build them one using wordpress for an extortionate public service fee. It'd be a significant improvement.

A major overhaul of their site is imminent.

sdanseo · 20-03-2018 9:15pm

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

A major overhaul of their site is imminent.

I heard rumblings of that on here last Autumn, and it's been mentioned once or twice since with thoughts that the warning system will be moved to impact based at the same time. Hence Gerry Murphy's slideshow (which no offence Gerry, a toddler with a crayon could have presented better).

Is there anything firm in terms of news of this or just hearsay?

Gaoth Laidir · 21-03-2018 12:54am

sdanseo wrote: »

I heard rumblings of that on here last Autumn, and it's been mentioned once or twice since with thoughts that the warning system will be moved to impact based at the same time. Hence Gerry Murphy's slideshow (which no offence Gerry, a toddler with a crayon could have presented better).

Is there anything firm in terms of news of this or just hearsay?

From the horse's mouth.

DumbBrunette · 21-03-2018 3:42pm

sryanbruen wrote: »

DumbBrunette wrote: »

Does anyone know what happened to Met Eireann's monthly weather bulletins? All I can find on their website is the (relatively) boring monthly summaries - have they stopped producing the bulletin magazine? Or have they stopped making it available for free?

You can find them in the archive section of the monthly weather reports page. They have not done them on months past December 2015 though which I do not understand and find a bit annoying since I enjoy looking at them.

I do not like their changes to the monthly weather reports page over the years, they seem to make it more confusing for me to navigate through.

I wonder if they stopped making them at end of 2015? That would be a big loss to all us weather/climate lovers

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 8:25pm

sryanbruen wrote: »

If I were to work in Met Éireann, I would ask to be the one in charge of the weather history parts of the website which I would try and massively improve. The site needs a complete overhaul, this is 2018, not 1988.

How limited their data is to the public domain and or scarce on their website in great depth - I need to look through long excel documents of multiple stations just to find certain figures - for a weather historian like myself whom is fascinated in every way for such is very unnecessarily tedious.

I do articles from time to time in the Irish Weather Statistics thread. I do these with the information I can find online - would be great if I could look into the actual data at Met Éireann. I do them randomly because I try to think of historical months or periods or spells etc that you find interesting and or willing to read. Giving thanks on my posts always lets me know you enjoyed it or appreciate my work along with motivating me to continue to further my posts. The articles are made as trips down memory lane or either getting to know events you may have not experienced because you weren't alive then etc. This is meant to be the library for all weather historians of Ireland and or the UK - at least that's what I aimed it to be. I continue to provide the best content I can with making interesting facts, tables etc using the data I have. That January daily temperature records table to this day is the most tedious thing I have ever done in my life, had to go through as much of Met Éireann's stations' historical data as possible and look at the maximums and minimums of every single January in their records, add the record onto the table if it is a record for Ireland. I wanted to do this because the UK has their own but Ireland doesn't.

I've been saying that I've been working on a November/December 2010 article for months now and continue to do so because these months were so special and remarkable that I want this specific article to be as in-depth and detailed as possible including outlooks, warnings, day to day summaries, facts, statistics and so on. In terms of the outlooks, I'm always willing for some help because I was not here on the scene in 2010 with the models though I did make very amateur forecasts at the time.

If you want the data you should ask for it, or go work/study somewhere that has a cooperation with Met Eireann. There are not a lot of groups that give out their data freely, sometimes with some good reasons.

Danno · 21-03-2018 8:57pm

riffmongous wrote: »

If you want the data you should ask for it, or go work/study somewhere that has a cooperation with Met Eireann. There are not a lot of groups that give out their data freely, sometimes with some good reasons.

We all finance Met Eireann via taxation. Therefore any data should be freely available to the taxpayers.

Oneiric 3 · 21-03-2018 9:03pm

riffmongous wrote: »

If you want the data you should ask for it, or go work/study somewhere that has a cooperation with Met Eireann. There are not a lot of groups that give out their data freely, sometimes with some good reasons.

In fairness, Met Éireann have made a lot of valuable data available to the public recently, and in my experience, they are more than willing to give out even more (without charge) upon request by email.

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:09pm

Danno wrote: »

We all finance Met Eireann via taxation. Therefore any data should be freely available to the taxpayers.

You give the data out freely and it'll be used by a handful of taxpayers and a majority of private companies and organisations from other countries, who didn't contribute to it. If you take away the opportunity for monetising the data, ME lose out on money and you're going to end up with a worse service.

sryanbruen · 21-03-2018 10:11pm

I didn't mean to start a debate, oops

.

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:11pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

In fairness, Met Éireann have made a lot of valuable data available to the public recently, and in my experience, they are more than willing to give out even more (without charge) upon request by email.

Well that's what I said, ask them. But having all the data freely available on the internet is not a good idea

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:12pm

sryanbruen wrote: »

I didn't mean to start a debate, oops .

It's a valid debate in fairness. But seriously, if you want the data try asking them, you might save yourself a lot of time and work.

sryanbruen · 21-03-2018 10:15pm

riffmongous wrote: »

It's a valid debate in fairness. But seriously, if you want the data try asking them, you might save yourself a lot of time and work.

Thing would be, I don't know the wording I would put in the email to them. Like, there is many data available on the site but it can be very tedious and complicated to navigate through especially because much of their data is made to be accessible to casuals like their summaries.

Oneiric 3 · 21-03-2018 10:21pm

riffmongous wrote: »

But having all the data freely available on the internet is not a good idea

Because why?

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:24pm

sryanbruen wrote: »

Thing would be, I don't know the wording I would put in the email to them. Like, there is many data available on the site but it can be very tedious and complicated to navigate through especially because much of their data is made to be accessible to casuals like their summaries.

Just tell them what you are doing, make sure to give them a link to it here too so they can see it's not-profit, and then ask for what you would like; stations, variables/product and time range. If they say no, well no harm done. The data will almost certainly be in a database so for them it's very easy to get the data, and they'll give it to you maybe as a csv file or something, depending on how much you ask for

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:24pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Because why?

riffmongous wrote: »

You give the data out freely and it'll be used by a handful of taxpayers and a majority of private companies and organisations from other countries, who didn't contribute to it. If you take away the opportunity for monetising the data, ME lose out on money and you're going to end up with a worse service.

.

Oneiric 3 · 21-03-2018 10:33pm

As already stated, Met Éireann are already funded by the taxpayer. They are not a for-profit organisation.

As it stands, there are already many stipulations on the use of the available data, which includes restrictions on commercial use by outside interests.

riffmongous · 21-03-2018 10:44pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

As already stated, Met Éireann are already funded by the taxpayer. They are not a for-profit organisation.

Lots of organisations charge for parts of their data, or sets up agreements to share it with other groups.

https://www.met.ie/agri-environment/MET_AgServicesLeaflet_rev3.pdf

Additional climate data and products are available.. but may be subject to a fee

Austria

Price from 70 Euros

sryanbruen · 22-03-2018 12:07pm

This is what they said to me.

All of the data for these events are available online from our Historical data page. Please note a link to “Download the full data series” is displayed after selecting a station and element. Also detailed reports for these events are available on the Major Weather Events page at http://www.met.ie/climate-ireland/major-events.asp .

The monthly weather bulletins have been subsumed into the Annual Weather Report from 2016 onwards.

That was of no help.....

Donegal Storm · 22-03-2018 9:28pm

What data are you looking for exactly? You can download files with an entire month of 10 minute synop reports on there from what I can see

sryanbruen · 22-03-2018 9:34pm

Donegal Storm wrote: »

What data are you looking for exactly? You can download files with an entire month of 10 minute synop reports on there from what I can see

The kind of data I post in the Irish Weather Statistics thread sometimes like the minimum temperatures for every year which I did by analysing through said historical data and their monthly weather bulletins or summaries.

I was also wondering if they had any extra information they did not provide on their site on January 1982 and November/December 2010 in particular.

I would also like if it was easier to navigate through, documents and files are all over the place on the site.

Donegal Storm · 22-03-2018 9:51pm

Teach yourself some basic SQL and download something like PostgreSQL, all you'd have to do then is download whatever data series you want and dump the csv's into your own database. You could just run some quick queries to find the min, max or whatever data you want instead of having to trawl through all the data.

You'd still have to download every monthly series individually as far as I can see but its a lot less work than repeatedly going through everything manually!

Edit: Actually just playing around with the historical data page, it seems you can download the entire data series for every station with one click, I was never aware of that! I might throw something together myself when I get the time

sryanbruen · 22-03-2018 10:23pm

Donegal Storm wrote: »

Teach yourself some basic SQL and download something like PostgreSQL, all you'd have to do then is download whatever data series you want and dump the csv's into your own database. You could just run some quick queries to find the min, max or whatever data you want instead of having to trawl through all the data.

You'd still have to download every monthly series individually as far as I can see but its a lot less work than repeatedly going through everything manually!

Edit: Actually just playing around with the historical data page, it seems you can download the entire data series for every station with one click, I was never aware of that! I might throw something together myself when I get the time

How do you download the entire data series for every station with one click?

Oh you're referring to every individual station's data..... not every stations' data with one click.

Donegal Storm · 22-03-2018 10:35pm

Yeah every individual station sorry, if you ctrl+A on the parameters you can select them all then click 'download the full hourly/daily/monthly data series' which downloads the whole stations historical records in csv format. Should only be 15 minutes work to download everything in that case

Monthly Weather Bulletin - what happened?

Comments