MSC Open Data Services
The Meteorological Service of Canada makes weather, climate, water and environmental data available to the private sector, academics, and the general public at various spatial and temporal scales in Canada and around the world for a variety of application domains. Several platforms and tools are available depending on the range of use cases.
In addition to a large selection of open data, the MSC offers cost-recovering data services to specialized users, namely archived data retrieval and dedicated data feed services with 24/7 support.
MSC GeoMet APIs and geospatial web services
The MSC GeoMet platform provides public access to the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) data via interoperable web services and application programming interfaces (API). Through open standards, users can freely and quickly access thousands of real-time and archived weather, climate and water datasets and products and integrate them in their domain-specific applications and decision support systems. Users can build mobile apps, create interactive web maps, and display and animate MSC data in desktop software. MSC GeoMet also enables on demand raw data clipping and reprojection, on demand format conversion and custom visualization.
MSC Datamart raw data HTTPS server
The Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) raw data HTTPS server, the MSC Datamart, is a source of raw weather, water, climate and environmental data.
This service is aimed at specialized users with good meteorological and IT knowledge, and is mainly meant to be accessed in an automatic manner via the Internet.
The MSC has set up a data wire for announcing file availability on the MSC Datamart. This data wire uses the 'Advanced Message Queuing Protocol' (AMQP) protocol. Not only does this enable the user to be notified of available products as they're published, but also to receive them automatically.
MSC AniMet
MSC AniMet is a simple tool enabling users to interact with MSC Open Data weather, climate, water and environmental data and create custom weather animations for any area in the world. The resulting animations can be downloaded and shared with a permalink.
MSC AniMet can be used to showcase a diversity of weather events such as storms, heat waves, hurricane trajectories, air quality events, extreme wind gusts, and much more.
Long description
The image presents a weather map combining two layers of information: the GOES-East natural color satellite imagery and the radar layer of rainfall precipitation rate in millimeters per hour (mm/h).
The GOES-East layer in so-called “natural” color provides a realistic view of the weather conditions over a large region, showing cloud cover (colder and higher cloud tops appear in cyan and clouds with warmer and lower cloud tops appear in white), snow on the ground (also in cyan), smoke plumes and geographical features visible from space for southern Ontario and Quebec.
Superimposed on this satellite image, the radar layer of rainfall precipitation rate indicates the intensity of ongoing precipitation. The colored areas represent different precipitation intensities, ranging from light precipitation (lower values) to heavier showers (higher values). The color scale, visible on the image, helps interpret these values.
This map allows meteorologists and users to track the evolution of weather systems in real time by combining satellite observation and precipitation data for a better understanding of current atmospheric conditions.
Cost-recovered services
Dedicated data feeds with 24/7 support are available to specialized users and may include data not directly available to the public. Pricing varies according to the desired data types and associated bandwidth requirements. Contracts typically span over a year or more, and payments are usually processed on a monthly basis.
Moreover, Environment and Climate Change Canada does not have on online service to retrieve archived data. The archived data retrieval service is provided under a cost recovery policy.
Contact us
If you have further questions about these data services, please contact us to discuss your needs and how we can help.