Blog

Open Data incubator

22 December 2014

Welcome to our Open Data incubator! Here we’ll show you how to create a data visualisation using Met Office Open Data.

In this exercise you will create an interactive map of recent weather observations using Met Office Open Data. You can decide what data to display and how it should be displayed. When you have finished you can also publish your map on the web or send it to your friends.

To do this you will be using Google Fusion and you will need an internet connection, a web browser, Microsoft Excel or equivalent, and a Google account. You can create your own free Google account if you do not already have one.

1. Download Met Office observation data

Go to the data.gov.uk website. This data is licenced using an Open Government Licence. This means that anyone is free to download, use, and re-use it for any purpose.

In the ‘Query Type’ drop down box select ‘Observation Data’. This will automatically update ‘Site Code’ to ‘All Observation Sites’ and ‘Date of Issue’ to today’s date.

Next click ‘Search’ and the data will automatically download to your computer as a CSV file that you can open in Excel. Rename this file: Recent Weather Observations UK.

Screenshot of the search query form

2. Create a Google Fusion table

Open a web browser and go to google.com/fusiontables.

Click on ‘Create a Fusion Table’.

Select ‘From this computer’ and click ‘Browse’ to find the ‘Recent Weather Observations UK’ file that you saved to your computer. Make sure that Separator character ‘Comma’ and Character encoding ‘UTF-8’ are selected, and click ‘Next’.

Click ‘Next’ again.

In the ‘Table name’ field add the title ‘Recent Weather Observations UK’ and then click ‘Finish’.

3. Display weather observation data on a map

Select the ‘Map of Latitude’ tab.

You can now:

  • Zoom in using the tool on the left of the map, then click on one of the red circles. See what information is being displayed about that weather station.

  • Click ‘Change info window’ and select all the weather observation variables that you would like to see when you click on a station.

  • Click on ‘Change feature styles’ and select how you would like each of the weather stations to appear on the map.

Now click on one of the weather station icons and see if it is how you want it to appear. Once you are finished click ‘Done’ (top-right).

4. Publish your weather observation map

Congratulations you have just created an interactive map of recent weather observations. If you would like to share this with other people you can publish the map to the web by clicking ‘Tools’ on the menu bar, then select ‘Publish’.