Weather affects most of our daily activities like going out to see friends or family, going to work, and even other important engagements. Bad weather conditions can affect the operations of some businesses and can even make business owners lose money due to damages or loss of goods.
Over the years, technological advancements have made it possible to seamlessly track both local and international weather data. This makes it possible for individuals and organizations to prepare for bad weather conditions.
One way developers get to work with this data is through Weather APIs.
What Are Weather APIs
Weather APIs are programming interfaces that are connected to sources of information that provide weather forecasts or the current weather conditions of a particular area. This enables developers to create applications or tools like mobile apps, web apps, desktop apps, or CLI tools that give users weather information like humidity, temperature, precipitation, visibility, wind speed, and more.
In this article, we’ll consider seven of these APIs that can be easily used to get relevant global data.
ClimaCell Weather API
ClimaCell’s Weather API provides historical, real-time, weather forecasts as well as air quality, road risk, pollen, and fire index by making use of advanced technologies. These features enable developers to easily predict weather conditions.
It is an intelligent platform that does not only deliver data, but analyses data to help business decisions. It also exposes different templates that can get you started without having to design from scratch.
With the free plan, at most 100 calls can be made per hour but this can be increased by subscribing to other premium plans.
How to Use the ClimaCell MicroWeather API
You need to have an API key to use Climacell. Create an account here to get your API key.
The reference here briefly explains how to go about making various requests.
A typical response from the API looks like this:
OpenWeatherMap API
The free plan limits API calls to at most 60 per minute.
How to use OpenWeatherMap API
First, create an account here to get an API key. Examples of API calls are:
- https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?q=London&appid=yourKey: This returns the current weather for London in the following format:
- https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather?lat=9.04&lon=7.49&appid=yourKey: This returns the current weather for the location with latitude and longitude of 9.04 and 7.49 respectively.
OpenWeatherMap API also provides weather forecasts minutely, daily, and hourly.
Weatherstack
Weatherstack provides instant, real-time, historical, and accurate weather information for various locations in JSON format and is free to get started with.
The API is built and maintained by a software company based in London, United Kingdom, and Vienna, Austria.
The free plan is limited to 1,000 calls/month and the other premium plans come with a good number of features like astronomy data, support for about 40 languages, bulk queries, custom solutions, and HTTPS encryption.
How to Use Weatherstack
Sign up for a free account here, login and get your API key. For example, make a request to this URL http://api.weatherstack.com/current?access_key=yourKey&query=abuja
You should get a response similar to the following:
AerisWeather
AerisWeather API provides weather data and forecasts for several locations and even provides services like earthquake warnings, storm reports, and other unique data for premium subscribers. AerisWeather also provides a number of SDKs and a Weather Mapping platform that developers can easily integrate in their applications.
How to Use AerisWeather
After signing up for a free account here, you’ll be given some access keys which will be used in all API calls. here is detailed documentation on how to make calls to AerisWeather API.
A typical response for weather condition looks like this:
AccuWeather
AccuWeather provides several services which include Forecast API, Current Conditions API, Imagery API, alerts API, and an Indices API that provides flight delays, mosquito activity, stargazing, and other daily index values for specific locations.
The AccuWeather API provides weather data such as current, historical, detailed, and forecasted information that developers can leverage to build a wide range of innovative and engaging weather data-powered applications.
The documentation is very comprehensive and interactive which allows users to try out different endpoints and see their responses.
How to Use AccuWeather
Create an account here, create an app, and get an API key. Then, use your API key to test out an endpoint that returns the current conditions for top cities here
Here’s what part of the response looks like:
Weatherbit
Weatherbit is a high performant API that offers different APIs for historical data, forecasts, and other data like soil temperature, moisture, and air quality. The free plan is limited to 500 calls per day. Weatherbit also offers other premium plans starting from $35/month with added features like Commercial Use Licence, AgWeather API access among others.
How to use Weatherbit
You can get started for free by creating an account here and going through the documentation
For example, to get the current weather for Raleigh, make a request to this URL https://api.weatherbit.io/v2.0/current?city=raleign&key=youKey
You should get a response like this:
WeatherAPI
WeatherAPI offers detailed, real-time, and historical weather services along with Geolocation, astronomical and sports APIs in JSON and XML format. The free plan is limited to 20,000 API calls per month and the paid plans start from $4 per month.
How to Use WeatherAPI
Get started by creating an account here, get an API key and make a request to http://api.weatherapi.com/v1/current.json?key=yourKey&q=London.
This returns to the current weather conditions in London.
Conclusion
As there are a good number of Weather APIs that offer several services with varying pricing plans, it could become a challenge for developers to make the right decision while starting out a project considering their preferences, budget, and other factors.
In this article, we covered a few of these services, what they offer and how to use some of them.