This opening has been requested for a long time by associations and companies. But the general public will also be able to benefit from it. From January 1, all data and forecasts from Meteo France will be accessible free of charge and freely reusable, the government announced. “Meteo-France will eliminate all its royalties for the reuse of public data at the end of 2023,” indicates the government in a press release.
“This deletion concerns 38 data sets including real-time observation data, climatological data and radar data”, until now accessible only by paying a fee.
This development is the consequence of European legislation which, since 2019, has required the free provision, with exceptions, of public service data. The end of Météo-France fees will allow “real-time access and at a frequency of 6 minutes, to data from more than 2,000 observation stations and to all of its radar data (40 radars in mainland France and abroad). overseas…) in real time and every 5 minutes,” the press release continues.
Objective: better understand climate change
Temperature, humidity, wind direction and strength, pressure, precipitation, among others, will be available, as will the national thermal indicator (daily average of air temperature recorded at 30 representative weather stations). The data from the French establishment’s powerful numerical forecasting models, Arome and Arpege, will also be freely accessible, “up to 4 days later”.
Climatological data, that is to say the past observations over several decadesas well as projections of the future climate until the end of the century, at the national and local levels, will also be accessible.
This should allow “decision-makers (ministries, communities, businesses) to better understand what climate they will be faced with and to anticipate, through adaptation strategies, the effects of climate change,” assures the government. This new stage should also make it possible to “note the already observed effects of climate change and offer a breeding ground for innovation and research to businesses and researchers”, as well as “facilitate information for civil society”, states the press release.
Revenue of more than 1.5 million euros
In July, Météo-France strategy director Christophe Morel told the daily The world that these royalties represented 1.6 million euros in 2022, or 0.42% of the 2021 budget. In a report published in May, the Infoclimat, Météo-Parapente and OpenStreetMap associations defended that free opening of this data would have “ socio-economic benefits of around 4 to 8 times the money invested in Météo-France”.
This free access represents a technical challenge for making available the very large volume of information produced by Météo-France since “in 2022, more than 1,000 TB have been disseminated”.