Meandair has launched AirportWeather.com, a new weather service that provides actual weather (AW-METAR) and near-term forecasts (AW-TAF) for every airport in Europe, including the regular METAR/TAF reports where available. The service was developed over the last year together with a number of participating airports.

Only seven per cent of all airports worldwide issue regular weather information (METAR) and even fewer issue regular weather forecasts (TAF). Based on advanced weather nowcasting models, AirportWeather.com provides high quality actual weather information and forecasts for every airport. With this service airports have their own virtual meteorological office and can much better serve their pilots and operators.

AirportWeather.com provides pilots and operators with accurate and up-to-date weather information and forecasts. The service is available for free to all pilots using the app or using the web version.

Subscribed airports will have unlimited access to their AirportWeather.com weather reports and forecasts, and for these airports, pilots will also have unlimited access to these reports and forecasts. Airports are invited to sign up for a free trial to access features such as a kiosk mode to show weather reports, forecasts and local banners at their airport lobby, flight school or restaurant.

Until August 2023, airports and pilots will have unlimited access to AirportWeather.com weather reports and forecasts. From August 2023, unlimited weather reports and forecasts will only be available for subscribed airports, and pilots will get a limited number of accesses per day for unsubscribed airports.

Insight in the weather for the coming minutes and hours is essential for timely decisions in critical domains such as aviation, renewable energy, transportation and logistics and agriculture.

Information about weather is available from various sources. Recent observational weather data is available from sources such as satellite imagery, ground-based weather radar networks and various meteorological stations around the world. Weather forecasts for several days ahead are the result of complex meteorological models running on supercomputers. These global predictions, mainly by national meteorological institutes, are published every six hours and use observations collected several hours earlier. Effectively these predictions are several hours old.

Insight in the weather for the coming minutes and hours requires near-term weather predictions that are based on very recent observational data. The unique Meandair Nowcasting Weather Engine provides weather forecasts for the next several hours based on observations from satellites and ground stations that are only a few minutes old. Meandair forecasts are accurate, localised and near real-time and thus provide significant value to aviation and renewable energy markets. This is achieved by combining vast and state-of-the-art expertise in meteorology and design of fast and efficient machine learning algorithms and AI.

The development of the Meandair Nowcasting Weather Engine is supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) through ESA Space Solutions and is carried out in collaboration with Science & Technology and KNMI.