Wired News: NOAA National Weather Service Data available in XML

[Randy Burge]

Weather Data for the Masses?

Wired News
By Daniel Terdiman?
02:00 AM Dec. 04, 2004 PT

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week began
providing weather data in an open-access XML format, alleviating concerns
that commercial providers would continue to play a dominant role in how
weather data gets to the public.

Previously, the data was technically available to the public, but in a
format that's not easily deciphered. Taxpayers fund the NOAA and the
subsidiary National Weather Service, which gathers weather data from
thousands of locations and uses massive computing firepower to predict the
weather.

Commercial weather providers like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel then
massage the data, supplement it with their own and turn it into
consumer-friendly websites and TV weather segments. The commercial weather
providers make more than $1 billion in revenue each year from sales to
media, transportation companies, farmers and financial traders, according to
Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president.

That arrangement rankled some. "The public should not have to pay twice for
access to basic government information that has been created at taxpayer
expense," wrote Ari Schwartz, an associate director of the nonprofit Center
for Democracy and Technology, in a July 28, 2004, essay.

Earlier this year, NOAA made the data available in XML as a test, called the
National Digital Forecast Database. After receiving comments from the public
and commercial providers, the agency made the decision permanent this week.
Now anyone can get information in an XML format directly from the National
Digital Forecast Database website.

"There was pressure on the National Weather Service not to make that
information available," said Jamais Cascio, a writer for WorldChanging, an
online pro-environment publication. But now "anyone with XML skills can
build a reader," Cascio said. "It takes a minimal amount of XML knowledge to
cobble together a weather program, and that's exciting."

The commercial weather companies disagree with charges that they had tried
to discourage implementation of the new policy. In fact, they say the battle
over the new policy had nothing to do with access to weather data.

"Our position, both in the industry and at AccuWeather, has always been to
have the data free and openly accessible," said Myers. "This new policy is
not really about the availability of data. It's about the broader issue of
what NOAA and the National Weather Service should be doing with their
federal funding."

But Schwartz wrote that the weather companies were specifically opposed to
opening up access to weather data.

"NWS data feeds are available only in a closed proprietary format -- and
therefore not readily usable by the public," Schwartz wrote, "and the
commercial weather industry is fighting to keep it this way."

Myers said that implication is wrong. Weather-industry companies were
promoting the idea that the government restrict special interests that have
the ability to pay for the data -- like Major League Baseball teams or
citrus growers -- from acquiring it for free, he said.

"Our position is that specialized services are not the domain of the
National Weather Service," Myers said. "The domain of the National Weather
Service is security and life and property and helping protect people from
severe weather."

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http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65919,00.html