Today, we see many external services on many websites and applications, such as currency, traffic, and breaking news.
However, today the most common external data we see in applications is weather forecast data.
In particular, accurate weather forecasts are actively used by many applications on a global scale.
With accurate weather forecasts, it is quite possible to attract people from almost every geography and location to our applications.
By presenting this data in real time in our applications, we can ensure that users visit our applications at regular intervals.
So what is the best way to get weather forecast data nowadays? In this article, we will find the answer to this question, but first, let’s list the most popular use cases of global weather forecast data.
What Are the Popular Use Cases Of The Global Weather Forecast Data?
Global weather forecast data has been popularly used in many different fields recently.
Many businesses that provide different services use this data actively. Here are the main popular use cases for global forecast data:
- Weather Forecasts: This use case is the most common use of global weather forecast data. Weather forecast data is an important reference source for developments that affect our daily lives. Weather apps and websites use global forecast data to help people plan their daily activities, organize their travel, and choose their clothes. In addition, we see this data at certain intervals on many television channels today.
- Maritime and Aviation: Safety is paramount for the maritime and aviation industries. They often use weather forecast data to plan travel effectively and to maximize safety. Pilots and sailors use weather forecasts in their operations, such as route planning and emergency management.
- Energy and Renewables: Many energy companies actively use weather forecasts to optimize power generation and distribution, especially when using environmentally beneficial renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. This data helps energy companies use resources more effectively.
- Tourism and Travel Industry: One of the most common use cases of global weather forecast data is its use in the tourism and travel industry. The tourism industry uses weather forecasts as an important criterion for holiday planning and destination selection. Tourists determine their travel dates and destinations by considering the weather conditions.
What Is the Best Way To Get Global Weather Forecast Data?
The best way to get global forecast data is to use weather APIs. Many weather APIs are in the market today for this service, which is increasingly used. Weather APIs give us easy and reliable access to weather data.
They also provide real-time service. In this way, we get the most up-to-date data in the fastest way.
These APIs provide real-time and up-to-date weather information by connecting to large meteorological databases.
They support millions of locations around the world as they serve globally. Especially popular weather APIs like weatherstack API provide their users with global weather forecast data of millions of cities and towns worldwide at high speed.
Weather APIs are generally convenient and easy to use for different programming languages and platforms.
In this way, we do not face a huge cost to integrate weather data into applications or websites.
Also, APIs are often feature-rich and offer different data options such as hourly, daily, or weekly forecasts. Thus, users can access the weather information that best suits their needs and make accurate plans.
Get Global Weather Forecast Data With A Python
In this step, we will show you how to get weather forecast data with Python programming language.
For this, we will use the weatherstack API, which has been widely used in the market recently.
The weatherstack API is one of the most popular weather APIs used by global companies such as Microsoft, Deloitte, and Ericsson.
We need an API key to obtain and use weather forecast data from this API. For this, let’s sign up for one of the paid subscription plans provided by the weatherstack API and get an API key.
After obtaining the API key, we can start using the weatherstack API’s weather forecast endpoint. The structure of the weather forecast endpoint provided by the weatherstack API is as follows:
Now, let’s create a Python file named ‘weather-forecast-data-with-weatherstack’ in the file path where we will develop the application and put the integration code below.
import requests
url = “http://api.weatherstack.com/forecast?access_key=YOUR-ACCESS-KEY&query=Berlin&forecast_days=1&hourly=1”
payload={}
header = {}
response = requests.request(“GET”, url, headers=headers, data=payload)
print(response.text)
With this code snippet, we will get the weather forecast data for the Berlin location. Before running the application, let’s put our own API key in the ‘YOUR-ACCESS-KEY’ field and run the application with the following command:
python weather-forecast-data-with-weatherstack.py
Some of the responses we get after running the application will be as follows:
Conclusion
FAQs
- The weatherstack
- OpenWeather
- AccuWeather
