March 22, 2022
By Mary Marek-Spartz, MSP LTER Information Manager
Weather you were looking or not, two popular sources for open weather data were acquired by big tech companies. Dark Sky went to Apple, and Weather Underground went to IBM a few years ago. The Dark Sky API, popular among researchers looking for historical weather data, was discontinued in late 2021. When I went to use an R script last year that called the Weather Underground API, the R package no longer had access, as their API was retired in late 2018. Scripts that depended on these tools will be degradated, limiting research reproducibility, an important quality of any long-term research project.
At the MSP LTER, we are prioritizing an interface to open-access climate station data and coalescing our own station and sensor reports across the Twin Cities Metro Area (TCMA), along with resources from agencies and nonprofits such as NOAA and CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network). So far, the web app under our data catalog provides links to these external resources and their TCMA station locations, but we plan to include our own data and additional crowd-sourced meteorological and hydrological data in the near future!
About Mary
Mary Marek-Spartz is the Information Manager and GIS Analyst for the MSP LTER. In her role, Mary acts as the data engineer for all research at the site by building and maintaining the systems that collect, process, and store site data so that it's clean, reliable, and ready for publication. She also provides data analysis, training, and other support to MSP LTER's many researchers. She holds a PhD in Entomology from the University of Minnesota.