Server park upgrade, changes to aviation products and more 2021-11-08

New API servers

On Wednesday 10 Nov we will start moving the API traffic to a new server cluster which promises much better performance, due to faster processors and extensive use of SSD disks. Hopefully this will result in shorter response times and a higher turnaround. We'll start propagating the changes via DNS around 10:00 CET. We have done extensive testing of the new servers, but since the file distribution chain is a separate system it could possibly happen that some data have been forgotten by the backend producers. If there are something you feel is missing, please let us know ASAP at weatherapi-adm@met.no.

The change will at first only affect traffic going to https://api.met.no/. Those with special arrangements (other domains) will be notified later when it's time to move their traffic.

Aviation product changes

We will shortly be adding 22 new routes (vertical cross sections) to Routeforecast. At the same time we will be reducing the number of time steps from the current 84 to 22 (as stated in the documentation). This should result in better performance in generating the available lists.

There will also soon be a similar increase in the number of routes for NLAroutes, as well as a similar reduction in time steps.

The new sigcharts version 2.0 with Nordic maps is expected to go out of beta on 1 December, at which time we will deprecate the current version (don't worry, you will have time to migrate after the New Year).

We will also soon be launching a new option in Tafmetar, giving additional information such as AMD and COR (for TAFs), as well as COR, SPECI and AUTO (for METARs). These will prefix the existing messages, and can be enabled by using the parameter extended=true. More information on this later.

Finally, the IGA warnings will be removed from Aviationforecast in December.

EOL for the old Yr API

As previously mentioned, the "free weather data" API on yr.no is going away, and will be turned off completely on 1 February 2022. This will affect both the XML data (varsel.xml and forecast.xml) and the HTML widgets currently used on many websites. Until then the services will suffer planned outages of increasing length, informing developers of the need to change to newer services.

For more information, see the Yr Developer docs or contact NRK at support@yr.no.

https://developer.yr.no/doc/guides/deprecating-old-widgets/

New version of available?

Finally, we are planning to replace our existing, home-grown "available" method with something a bit more effective, preferably using existing standards. It has been more or less unchanged since the launch of the API in 2007, and since then the amount of available files has grown enormously (we currently deliver over 5000 files for some products). This means the complete list can take several seconds to generate, which is a problem for the total API performance.

We are looking at some of the new OGC standards, which fully support OpenAPI and should in time hopefully be supported by standard libraries for the most used programming languages. If you are interested you can find some documentation here:

https://ogcapi.ogc.org/edr/overview.html

If you have some specific requests for new features in the "available2" functionality we would very much like to hear from you.

New beta version of sigcharts 2021-07-14

A short update, mainly of interest to Nordic users:

Sigcharts 2.0 beta

We have a new version of Sigcharts which, in addition to the previous Arctic/Norway also covers the Nordic/Baltic regian (minus Iceland). Also, the search interface has been made consistent with the rest of the API:

https://api.met.no/weatherapi/sigcharts/2.0/documentation

While currently in beta we suggest you start using this after the summer is over. We're not sure how long the current version 1.0 will live, this depends on how soon our regular users will take to implement the new version.

Forestfire index

As mentioned some weeks ago, the Forestfireindex product has been terminated and replaced with a new, map-based service:

https://skogbrannfare.met.no/

For those wishing to download the raw data used for the maps, these can now be found on our THREDDS server:

https://thredds.met.no/thredds/projects/fwi.html

TOS addition

With the ongoing migration of users from the Yr API to api.met.no, we've had to update our Terms of Service with a notice on trademark restrictions:

You are not allowed to make services/sites that appear to be made by Yr, NRK or The Norwegian Meteorological Institute. In other words, you may not use the word "yr" as a part of your service name, or attach the yr logo to your service.

https://api.met.no/doc/TermsOfService

This was previously only stated on the conditions of use on yr.no, but as the old Yr site (retro.yr.no) is closing down soon we've had to transfer the clause to the api.met.no TOS (incredibly, some users are still referring to this as the "Yr API", even though they were two different APIs and Yr is a completely different site run by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation).