ECCC Project, 100 Years of Open Access Meteorological Data

100 years of open access weather data Enhancing, disseminating and reusing our meteorological heritage

Map of the 8,756 weather stations of the Meteorological Service of Canada that once existed.

Wikimedia Canada's ECCC project consists of importing, in Wikimedia Commons, a century of meteorological data collected by 8,756 stations across Canada. The objectives of the project include reusing our meteorological heritage, influencing the rest of the world to import similar data in open access in Wikimedia Commons, and solving some of the climate change issues that affect us.

Background

In 2019, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is offering Wikimedia Canada funding until March 31, 2021 for its project entitled: "ECCC Weather Observations in Wikimedia Commons".

The inclusion of government and scientific data in Commons is a world first.

Participants

• Miguel Tremblay
• The KidPossum
• Peuc
• Louis-Philippe Rousseau Lambert
• Simon Villeneuve

Project stages and objectives

01 How do we want to use our weather heritage?   02 How can we influence the rest of the world to import similar open access data into Wikimedia Commons?   03 How can this data help us to solve some of the climate change issues that affect us?

Wikimedia Canada wants to bring together the general public, the weather community, the open data community, and science educators in the development, use, and dissemination of a century of Canadian weather data.

• Phase 1 (2019-2020) : import weather data into Commons from 8,756 Canadian observation stations over the past 100 years.
• Phase 2 (2020-2021) : to enhance the utilization these data, in particular, is to use and disseminate them in Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia.

Examples of utilizing meteorological heritage

SPARQL queries in Wikidata

It is possible to combine station metadata with each other and with all other data in Wikidata through SPARQL queries.

For example:

• stations within 10 km of ports in Canada
• stations in Ontario within 10 km of cities with a population of more than 100,000 habitants
• stations in Quebec within 1 km of a bridge longer than 100 m
• Canada's stations closed in 2017 and 2018
• List of other requests

Imported data types

1. "Temp. Max. Average (°C)"
2. "Temp. Min. Average (°C)"
3. "Frequency of precipitation (%)"
4. "Highest temperature (°C)"
5. "Highest temperature in a year"
6. "Highest temperature period"
7. "Data quality at the highest temperature"
8. "Lowest temperature (°C)"
9. "Lowest temperature year"
10. "Lowest temperature period"
11. "Data quality at the highest temperature"
12. "Highest precip. (mm)"
13. "Greatest precipitation year."
14. "Greatest period of precipitation."
15. "Greatest Precip. Data Quality"
16. "Highest rain (mm)"
17. "Highest precipitation year"
18. "Highest period of rain"
19. "Better quality precipitation data."
20. "Largest snowfall (cm)"
21. "Year with most snowfall"
22. "Greatest period of snowfall"
23. "Better quality of snowfall data"
24. "Highest snow on ground (cm)"
25. "Highest annual snow on ground amount"
26. "Period with the greatest snow on ground"
27. "The best snow on ground data quality"

See also

• Project page for weather observations on Wikidata

ECCC project, 100 years of meteorological data in free access.

• Final report of the first phase of the project (2019-2021) (English version)
• Report of the meeting of the 27th of January 2021 (English translation)
• Report of the meeting of the 10th of February 2021 (English version)

Medias:

• Interview (in French) by Ha-Loan Phan (WMCA) with Bruno Guglielminetti, in the podcast #MyCarnet of January 22, 2021
• Wikimedia Canada blog post
• Blog post on "Diff"
• Data to tell the story
  • Agricultural resilience lies at our feet... In the soil (on the Acfas website, English version)
  • Climate inequalities to make you insomniac (on the Acfas website, version française)
  • [Interview with Ali Akbar Sabzi and Laurence Taschereau (IVADO)]

Presentations:

• Presentation : ECCC project and Wikimedia Canada
• Presentation at the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) in 2021­
• Wikimania 2021(YouTube)
• World Meteorological Organization (2021-09-07)

Tools:

• Git repository of scripts used for data import
• Station selection on a map
• SPARQL query used to generate the screen capture

Government of Canada:

• Open Data User Stories (Canada's Open Government Portal)
• Real-time weather statistics maps (ECCC)

WMO

• WIS 2.0 (World Meteorological Organization)
• Guide to WMO Climate Practices (2018)
• dépôt officiel des métadonnées WIGOS pour toutes les stations et plates-formes d'observation en surface (OSCAR)
• KNMI Climate Explorer