nh3simman
25-10-2008, 03:10 PM
If you need to do heat load calculations, you will need to know the ambient conditions.
I recently bought the ASHRAE Weather Viewer database for a project but I found that the number weather stations was a bit limited. ASHRAE have done a fantastic job of filtering out sub-standard data but what remains is only 4422 weather stations for the whole world.
Also, the first thing my client asked was "OK, let's see the climate at {some obscure place}"
I checked with map producers, government / municipal web sites, some of the bigger libraries and could not find a reasonable list of place names.
Finally, I have found something that I would like to share. Hopefully, you will also find it useful.
There is a MASSIVE list of place names published for free on the geonames web site.
http://www.geonames.org/
It has places name, country, state/province, latitude, longitude, altitude... and much much more.
Be aware, it is very big to download.
I also found that you can use the geonames database services to find the nearest weather station to get the latest readings directly. Try changing the lat and long to your place.
http://ws.geonames.org/findNearByWeatherXML?lat=43&lng=-2
This came from the following page:
http://www.geonames.org/export/JSON-webservices.html#weatherJSON
Now, I am seeing much more possibilities. Use Google Maps to let the user pick a place and get the climate directly from the nearest weather station. Maps actually has the tools to do this for you.
I recently bought the ASHRAE Weather Viewer database for a project but I found that the number weather stations was a bit limited. ASHRAE have done a fantastic job of filtering out sub-standard data but what remains is only 4422 weather stations for the whole world.
Also, the first thing my client asked was "OK, let's see the climate at {some obscure place}"
I checked with map producers, government / municipal web sites, some of the bigger libraries and could not find a reasonable list of place names.
Finally, I have found something that I would like to share. Hopefully, you will also find it useful.
There is a MASSIVE list of place names published for free on the geonames web site.
http://www.geonames.org/
It has places name, country, state/province, latitude, longitude, altitude... and much much more.
Be aware, it is very big to download.
I also found that you can use the geonames database services to find the nearest weather station to get the latest readings directly. Try changing the lat and long to your place.
http://ws.geonames.org/findNearByWeatherXML?lat=43&lng=-2
This came from the following page:
http://www.geonames.org/export/JSON-webservices.html#weatherJSON
Now, I am seeing much more possibilities. Use Google Maps to let the user pick a place and get the climate directly from the nearest weather station. Maps actually has the tools to do this for you.