MET Norway API
Hourly updates & 1 km forecasts for Scandinavia
The API makes use of MET Nordic weather models exclusively for North Europe, offering
exceptional short-term weather forecasts with hourly updates and 1 km resolution. However, for
longer forecasts of up to 16 days, the generic Weather Forecast API transparently combines MET Nordic with other weather models to take advantage of hourly updates.
Data Sources
This API uses local weather models from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. The MET Nordic dataset is derived from the 2.5 km MetCoOp ensemble model with ECMWF initialization. With post-processing based on measurement & radar and with updates every hour, the short-term forecast performance skill should be high.
Unfortunately, only 2.5 days of forecast are available. After 2.5 days, Open-Meteo combines forecasts with the ECMWF IFS HRES 9 km model to provide up to 15 days of forecast.
| Weather Model | Region | Spatial Resolution | Temporal Resolution | Forecast Length | Update frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MET Nordic |    | 1 km | Hourly | 2.5 days | Every hour |
Native Model Variables
MET Nordic is a post-processed 1 km dataset with a small set of native fields. Open-Meteo retains these fields or uses them to calculate more convenient API variables. Wind is provided directly as speed and direction and only global solar radiation is available.
| Native MET Nordic field | Level | Use in the Open-Meteo API |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | 2 m | temperature_2m |
| Relative humidity | 2 m | Relative humidity and dew point |
| Wind speed and direction | 10 m | wind_speed_10m, wind_direction_10m |
| Wind gusts | 10 m | wind_gusts_10m |
| Mean sea-level pressure | Mean sea level | pressure_msl and derived surface pressure |
| Total precipitation | Surface | precipitation, rain, snowfall |
| Global solar radiation | Surface | Global, direct, diffuse radiation, DNI and GTI |
| Total cloud cover | Surface | cloud_cover |
MET Nordic provides only total cloud cover — no cloud layers — and no CAPE, so weather codes cannot include thunderstorms.
Derived Variables
MET Nordic is a post-processed dataset with a small set of native fields: temperature, relative humidity, total cloud cover, mean sea-level pressure, wind speed and direction, wind gusts, global solar radiation and precipitation. Everything else in the API is derived from these fields.
| Derived Variable | How it is derived? |
|---|---|
| Snowfall and rain | MET Nordic has no native snow field: precipitation counts as snow below 0°C, converted with 0.7 cm per mm. Rain is the remainder. |
| Weather code | Computed from cloud cover, precipitation, snowfall and wind gusts. Without CAPE or visibility, thunderstorm and fog codes are not produced. |
| Direct and diffuse solar radiation | Only global horizontal irradiance GHI is native. Diffuse radiation is separated using the Razo, Müller Witwer model; direct radiation is the remainder. DNI, GTI and instant values follow from solar geometry. |
| Dew point, vapour pressure deficit and wet bulb temperature | Calculated from native 2 m temperature and relative humidity. |
| Surface pressure | Calculated from mean sea-level pressure, 2 m temperature and terrain elevation. |
| Sunshine duration | Seconds per hour with derived direct normal irradiance above the WMO threshold of 120 W/m². |
| Apparent temperature and reference evapotranspiration ET₀ | Combine temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation. ET₀ follows the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equation. |
Wind speed and direction are native model fields and are not derived. Sunrise, sunset, daylight duration and the day-or-night flag are astronomical calculations. Daily values are aggregated from hourly data.
API Documentation
The API endpoint /v1/metno accepts a geographical coordinate, a list of weather variables and responds with a JSON hourly weather forecast for 2.5 days. Time always starts at 0:00 today. Data is only available in the Scandinavian region. All URL parameters are listed below:
| Parameter | Format | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| latitude, longitude | Floating point | Yes | Geographical WGS84 coordinates of the location. Multiple coordinates can be comma separated. E.g. &latitude=52.52,48.85&longitude=13.41,2.35. To return data for multiple locations the JSON output changes to a list of structures. CSV and XLSX formats add a column location_id. | |
| elevation | Floating point | No | The elevation used for statistical downscaling. Per default, a 90 meter digital elevation model is used. You can manually set the elevation to correctly match mountain peaks. If &elevation=nan is specified, downscaling will be disabled and the API uses the average grid-cell height. For multiple locations, elevation can also be comma separated. | |
| hourly | String array | No | A list of weather variables which should be returned. Values can be comma separated, or multiple &hourly= parameter in the URL can be used. | |
| current | String array | No | A list of weather variables to get current conditions. | |
| temperature_unit | String | No | celsius | If fahrenheit is set, all temperature values are converted to Fahrenheit. |
| wind_speed_unit | String | No | kmh | Other wind speed speed units: ms, mph and kn |
| precipitation_unit | String | No | mm | Other precipitation amount units: inch |
| timeformat | String | No | iso8601 | If format unixtime is selected, all time values are returned in UNIX epoch time in seconds. Please note that all time is then in GMT+0! For daily values with unix timestamp, please apply utc_offset_seconds again to get the correct date. |
| timezone | String | No | GMT | If timezone is set, all timestamps are returned as local-time and data is returned starting at 00:00 local-time. Any time zone name from the time zone database is supported. If auto is set as a time zone, the coordinates will be automatically resolved to the local time zone. For multiple coordinates, a comma separated list of timezones can be specified. |
| past_days | Integer (0-92) | No | 0 | If past_days is set, yesterday or the day before yesterday data are also returned. |
| forecast_days | Integer (0-3) | No | 3 | Per default, 3 days are returned. Up to 3 days of forecast are possible. |
| forecast_hours past_hours | Integer (>0) | No | Similar to forecast_days, the number of timesteps of hourly data can controlled. Instead of using the current day as a reference, the current hour is used. | |
| start_date end_date | String (yyyy-mm-dd) | No | The time interval to get weather data. A day must be specified as an ISO8601 date (e.g. 2022-06-30). | |
| start_hour end_hour | String (yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm) | No | The time interval to get weather data for hourly data. Time must be specified as an ISO8601 date (e.g. 2022-06-30T12:00). | |
| cell_selection | String | No | land | Set a preference how grid-cells are selected. The default land finds a suitable grid-cell on land with similar elevation to the requested coordinates using a 90-meter digital elevation model. sea prefers grid-cells on sea. nearest selects the nearest possible grid-cell. |
| apikey | String | No | Only required to commercial use to access reserved API resources for customers. The server URL requires the prefix customer-. See pricing for more information. |
Additional optional URL parameters will be added. For API stability, no required parameters will be added in the future!
Hourly Parameter Definition
The parameter &hourly= accepts the following values. Most weather variables are given as an instantaneous value for the indicated hour. Some variables like precipitation are calculated from the preceding hour as and average or sum.
| Variable | Valid time | Unit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| precipitation | Preceding hour sum | mm (inch) | Total precipitation (rain, showers, snow) sum of the preceding hour |
| pressure_msl surface_pressure | Instant | hPa | Atmospheric air pressure reduced to sea level (Mean sea level) and actual pressure at surface level |
| temperature_2m | Instant | °C (°F) | Air temperature at 2 meters above ground |
| relative_humidity_2m | Instant | % | Relative humidity at 2 meters above ground |
| dew_point_2m | Instant | °C (°F) | Dew point temperature at 2 meters above ground |
| apparent_temperature | Instant | °C (°F) | Apparent temperature is the perceived feels-like temperature combining wind chill factor, relative humidity and solar radiation |
| cloud_cover | Instant | % | Total cloud cover as an area fraction |
| wind_speed_10m | Instant | km/h (mph, m/s, knots) | Wind speed at 10 meters above ground. Wind speed on 10 meters is the standard level.. |
| wind_direction_10m | Instant | ° | Wind direction at 10 meters above ground. |
| wind_gusts_10m | Preceding hour max | km/h (mph, m/s, knots) | Gusts at 10 meters above ground as a maximum of the preceding hour |
| shortwave_radiation | Preceding hour mean | W/m² | Shortwave solar radiation as average of the preceding hour. This is equal to the total global horizontal irradiation |
| direct_radiation direct_normal_irradiance | Preceding hour mean | W/m² | Direct solar radiation as average of the preceding hour on the horizontal plane and the normal plane (perpendicular to the sun) |
| diffuse_radiation | Preceding hour mean | W/m² | Diffuse solar radiation as average of the preceding hour. MET Nordic does not offers diffuse and direct radiation directly. It is approximated based on Razo, Müller Witwer |
| global_tilted_irradiance | Preceding hour mean | W/m² | Total radiation received on a tilted pane as average of the preceding hour. The calculation is assuming a fixed albedo of 20% and in isotropic sky. Please specify tilt and azimuth parameter. Tilt ranges from 0° to 90° and is typically around 45°. Azimuth should be close to 0° (0° south, -90° east, 90° west, ±180 north). If azimuth is set to "nan", the calculation assumes a vertical tracker (east-west). If tilt is set to "nan", it is assumed that the panel has a horizontal tracker (up-down). If both are set to "nan", a bi-axial tracker is assumed. |
| sunshine_duration | Preceding hour sum | Seconds | Number of seconds of sunshine of the preceding hour per hour calculated by direct normalized irradiance exceeding 120 W/m², following the WMO definition. |
| vapour_pressure_deficit | Instant | kPa | Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) in kilopascal (kPa). For high VPD (>1.6), water transpiration of plants increases. For low VPD (<0.4), transpiration decreases |
| et0_fao_evapotranspiration | Preceding hour sum | mm (inch) | ET₀ Reference Evapotranspiration of a well watered grass field. Based on FAO-56 Penman-Monteith equations ET₀ is calculated from temperature, wind speed, humidity and solar radiation. Unlimited soil water is assumed. ET₀ is commonly used to estimate the required irrigation for plants. |
| weather_code | Instant | WMO code | Weather condition as a numeric code. Follow WMO weather interpretation codes. See table below for details. Weather code is calculated from cloud cover analysis, precipitation, snowfall and gusts. As MET Nordic has barely no information about atmospheric stability, estimation about thunderstorms is not possible. |
| snowfall | Preceding hour sum | cm (inch) | Snowfall amount of the preceding hour in centimeters. For the water equivalent in millimeter, divide by 7. E.g. 7 cm snow = 10 mm precipitation water equivalent. Snowfall amount is not provided by MET Nordic directly, instead it is approximated based on total precipitation and temperature |
JSON Return Object
On success a JSON object will be returned.
{
"latitude": 52.52,
"longitude": 13.419,
"elevation": 44.812,
"generationtime_ms": 2.2119,
"utc_offset_seconds": 0,
"timezone": "Europe/Berlin",
"timezone_abbreviation": "CEST",
"hourly": {
"time": ["2022-07-01T00:00", "2022-07-01T01:00", "2022-07-01T02:00", ...],
"temperature_2m": [13, 12.7, 12.7, 12.5, 12.5, 12.8, 13, 12.9, 13.3, ...]
},
"hourly_units": {
"temperature_2m": "°C"
}
}| Parameter | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| latitude, longitude | Floating point | WGS84 of the center of the weather grid-cell which was used to generate this forecast. This coordinate might be a few kilometres away from the requested coordinate. |
| elevation | Floating point | The elevation from a 90 meter digital elevation model. This effects which grid-cell is selected (see parameter cell_selection). Statistical downscaling is used to adapt weather conditions for this elevation. This elevation can also be controlled with the query parameter elevation. If &elevation=nan is specified, all downscaling is disabled and the average grid-cell elevation is used. |
| generationtime_ms | Floating point | Generation time of the weather forecast in milliseconds. This is mainly used for performance monitoring and improvements. |
| utc_offset_seconds | Integer | Applied timezone offset from the &timezone= parameter. |
| timezone timezone_abbreviation | String | Timezone identifier (e.g. Europe/Berlin) and abbreviation (e.g. CEST) |
| hourly | Object | For each selected weather variable, data will be returned as a floating point array. Additionally a time array will be returned with ISO8601 timestamps. |
| hourly_units | Object | For each selected weather variable, the unit will be listed here. |
| daily | Object | For each selected daily weather variable, data will be returned as a floating point array. Additionally a time array will be returned with ISO8601 timestamps. |
| daily_units | Object | For each selected daily weather variable, the unit will be listed here. |
Errors
In case an error occurs, for example a URL parameter is not correctly specified, a JSON error object is returned with a HTTP 400 status code.
{
"error": true,
"reason": "Cannot initialize WeatherVariable from invalid String value
tempeture_2m for key hourly"
}Weather variable documentation
WMO Weather interpretation codes (WW)
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | Clear sky |
| 1, 2, 3 | Mainly clear, partly cloudy, and overcast |
| 45, 48 | Fog and depositing rime fog |
| 51, 53, 55 | Drizzle: Light, moderate, and dense intensity |
| 56, 57 | Freezing Drizzle: Light and dense intensity |
| 61, 63, 65 | Rain: Slight, moderate and heavy intensity |
| 66, 67 | Freezing Rain: Light and heavy intensity |
| 71, 73, 75 | Snow fall: Slight, moderate, and heavy intensity |
| 77 | Snow grains |
| 80, 81, 82 | Rain showers: Slight, moderate, and violent |
| 85, 86 | Snow showers slight and heavy |
| 95 * | Thunderstorm: Slight or moderate |
| 96, 99 * | Thunderstorm with slight and heavy hail |
(*) Thunderstorm forecast with hail is only available in Central Europe