Assessment of the availability of near-real time open weather data provided by networks of surface stations in Spain

Abstract

The aims of this research are: (i) to check availability of weather observations from automated stations in Spain, (ii) to qualitatively and quantitatively describe the networks identified, (iii) to analyze availability of the observations gathered for 3 different networks [two government (GOV): AEMET with national coverage and CASTILLA Y LEON on a regional level; and METEOCLIMATIC, a network of volunteer weather observation (VWO) stations on a national level], and (iv) to undertake a spatial redundancy and lacunarity analysis of them. The results reveal: the existence of heterogeneous VWO networks complementing the GOV, differences within and among networks as far as data acquisition frequency, varying delays in their publication, and semantic differences in the observations made. An inventory was made of 24 networks (16 GOV and 8 VWO) with 3,908 stations deployed in Spain. An analysis of observations from 3 networks reveals that 88 % of the stations in the volunteer network record more than two observations per hour. 56 % of the AEMET stations report more than 48 observations every day, 31 % report between 25 and 48 observations a day. Conversely, the CASTILLA Y LEON network records data every half hour. The redundancy analysis reveals a 3,429-drop in the number of unduplicated stations. Following the lacunarity analysis of spatial distribution, it is possible to conclude that 60.72 % of the cells do not contain any stations.