Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
Get started with the Help page
Ask Your Question
4

What sources are available for typical weather data beyond energyplus.net

asked 8 years ago

updated 5 years ago

It's hard to believe this question hasn't been asked before, but I couldn't find it. Plenty of similar questions for historical and real weather data:

but nothing that asks about the traditional "typical year" weather data that is used for design. So here it is:

Outside of energyplus.net (and this related site), what other sources are available for typical year weather data for locations that are not otherwise covered (or poorly covered)?

Preview: (hide)

6 Answers

Sort by » oldest newest most voted
4

answered 8 years ago

Preview: (hide)
link

Comments

2

answered 8 years ago

Hey Neal,

The most complete weather file database remains for me the one provided by ASHRAE IWEC2: https://www.ashrae.org/resources--pub...

Kind regards,

Preview: (hide)
link
1

answered 8 years ago

Mike06's avatar

For historical data you can use https://www.wunderground.com/ Perhaps generate your own "averaged" data from it (e.g. 10 year average)?!

Have you heard about TRY (test reference years)? http://www.cibse.org/Knowledge/CIBSE-...

But those are not free, you have to purchase them.

Preview: (hide)
link

Comments

Mike06's avatar Mike06  ( 8 years ago )
0

answered 4 years ago

lklawrie's avatar

Climate.OneBuilding.org is pleased to announce that we have updated our TMYx weather data set for building simulation with source data through 2018. More than 13,500 locations are available worldwide. For locations in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Central and much of South America, solar data from NSRDB PSM V3 are included.

TMYx are derived from the ISD (US NOAA's Integrated Surface Database) with hourly data through 2018 using the TMY2/ISO ISO 15927-4:2005 methodologies. These TMYx include access to more data within the source ISD, improving their consistency and quality. More details on the numbers of locations by WMO region are shown below.

Climate.OneBuilding.org now provides a worldwide climate TMYx data for building simulation at no cost for more than 13,500 locations and another 3,200 from other data sources worldwide. All data have been through extensive quality checking to identify and correct data errors and out of normal range values where appropriate.

For more information or to download any of the weather data (no cost), go to http:/climate.onebuilding.org

Overall, a few more locations worldwide than in the previous update, with 13,553 locations and 10,687 recent TMYx.

Preview: (hide)
link
0

answered 8 years ago

If you need to get a lot of weather data all over the earth, and in a number of locations, Meteonorm is a valuable resource. It has the data for some 9,000 locations, and for where it does not it will synthesize it by evaluating nearby weather stations and taking into consideration other factors. Synthesized data has limitations, but as a tool to get you the data you need when there is no other option, it seems to work well.

It can be found here: http://www.meteonorm.com/

Preview: (hide)
link
0

answered 8 years ago

JustinLueker's avatar

For hourly weather data that is regularly updated, I use the NOAA climate data site. It's a bit hard to navigate so I usually follow these steps:

http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/datapro...

1. Select "Surface Data, Hourly Global (Over 10,000 worldwide sites)", click Access Products

2. Agree to the terms of WMO 40

3. Continue with SIMPLIFIED Options

4. Select the Country radio button and United States”, then click Continue

5. Select the state of interest from the dropdown menu and click the radio button for
Selected Stations in the state”, then click Continue

6. Select the station(s) of interest from the list.  You may select multiple stations by Controlclick. Note that there may be multiple stations with the same name  check the period of record to find the station which includes the dates you want. Click Continue”.

7. Enter the dates of interest.  You may want to click Select Only Obs. on the Hour”, especially if you plan to do timeseries analysis which requires records to be spaced evenly. Click Continue”.

8. Make sure the date range on the confirmation page matches the desired date range, then check Inventory Review checkbox, enter your email address (use a .edu address for free access), and click Submit Request”.   

9. The request verification page will tell you that your request is processing and that youll get an email when your data are ready. It will also give you a URL that will point to your data files when theyre ready.  You may keep this page open or just forget about it and wait for the email. The email will contain all the information you need.

10. Youll get an email from NCDC (cdo@ncdc.noaa.gov) when your data files are ready. The email will contain links to several files. The actual data will be available in two formats:
    a. DS3505  Surface Data, Hourly Global   Data File (a fixedwidth text file)
    b. DS3505  Surface Data, Hourly Global  Web File (an HTML table)
Either of these can be imported into Excel. The data file format and weather codes are documented at http://hurricane.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo/3505doc.txt
Preview: (hide)
link

Your Answer

Please start posting anonymously - your entry will be published after you log in or create a new account.

Add Answer

Training Workshops

Careers

Question Tools

2 followers

Stats

Asked: 8 years ago

Seen: 1,238 times

Last updated: Nov 30 '16