MetService forces WeatherWatch.co.nz to stop Daily Highs service

[gabba]

For those interested in following this further, there is now a lively and often humorous response thread to the  original article. It's worth a look and the idea of using personal weather stations is also mentioned

Some people are even jumping on the political bandwagon - didn't you know the reason why the met service are charging this much is because you voted for National! ROTFL

http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/metservice-forces-weatherwatchconz-stop-daily-highs-service

[Mark]

Gabba: As an extreme example if ww really wanted to save money they could just pull them manually off the ms website for free- but obviously they don't want that and they would have to state the data is provided by the nz govt and or the metservice.
I would not even attempt to copy the highs from MS. We would probably get our knuckles wrapped. Hence why we dont. Copyright. Apparently we are not allowed to copy anything from their site and republish. WW would be much the same I guess.

They have not given this forum permission to do as such  and despite my effects I doubt they will. Anything we are republishing as with maps is infringing on their copyright.
Maybe the forum needs to be weary of this.
[/quote]So Jenny where do we get our high & lows from they say MS on the posts.
And where does MS get there data do they own the weather stations?.

[JennyLeez]

We lift them from WW where we do have permission to copy from with link back on any of their articles. Hence the old shorter list was posted last night leaving out the extra 8 that the MS have recently added.
They may still have a contract for these as I think it was Alan who said something along those lines.
I have not gone back to WW regarding this as yet. Just watching and waiting. I think we are the least of WW's worries right now

The metservice stations; Hopefully others will have the answers here. I have always been of the understanding that the MS own most of these stations or have a financial interest in them. Most of them are at Airports. To my knowledge the one in Gisborne is owned by the Gisborne Airport and the Metservice pay an x amount of dollars for their data.

[Mark]

Thanks Jenny.
Looks like NIWA use the data from these stations too as there highs are the same in there Data.
Just been looking at the Ww Terms of Use and it looks like anyone can use this info as long as its not use for commercial purposes.

[TokWW]

They do not have a station in the South Waikato least in Tokoroa so they "guess" for Tokoroa and still get it wrong despite at least three pws weather stations on the internet from Tokoroa that they could "borrow' the data from...

[iomkiwi]

I don't think MS would have any problems with us manually getting the data from them, - after all they are manually checking our stations and using our info, especially those sites with webcams.

[JennyLeez]

I dont think we would win this one in a law suit somehow:

2.1 Limited Use Information is provided for Your own personal use in accordance with this Agreement. You must not:
use all or any part of the Limited Use Information for any commercial purpose; or
re-supply, alter, publicly display, perform or distribute (whether for consideration or otherwise) all or any part of the Limited Use Information,
without the prior written consent of MetService.

[gabba]

Metservice allow some information to be reposted with acknowlegement. They define information as two types:
Limited Use and General Use.

General Use data is clearly defined in the T's and C's and must only be used for non-commercial use with acknowledgement. Limited Use data is anything else that they provide and cannot be used without permission.

In all cases read the T's and C's which are available here and make sure you understand them before using the data in any way, either for yourself or the forum:
http://www.metservice.com/about/legal-disclaimer

As a note I've written this post about 3 times and not posted it, because I didn't want to encourage /  risk people posting the wrong data and potentially have the forum fall foul of the MS T's and C's. So I do have to (politely) mention at this point that anything posted on the forum against the MS T's and C's will be removed by the moderators.

[JennyLeez]

The forum now has written permission to use the Metservice site for information re forecasting, warnings, news, conditions etc.

We may publish but we may not make a profit from our publications.

So this is good news and keep us all above board

[TokWW]

DeepSouthWeather - a lot of temperature issues come down to the fact of poor installation, poor location, poor insulation and poor ventilation.  A Davis does not excuse three of those issues unless it has a 24hr FARS attached of which only a few models do.  They do have a reasonable Stevenson shield type of solar barrier and draft ventilation.

Most temperature sensors are accurate to within 0.1ºC whether is a Davis device or some other breed.

So, even a cheap la Crosse such as mine, can give a better range and response than a Davis with some home engineering and a good location.  The Vantage Vue Davis units, for example, are a compromise and leave some temperature issues to be desired.

Out of the box though and with some installation guidleines and rules, I agree, you can't go much past a Davis 6152 etc series (preferring the 6153 FARS model) if it has been well sited.

[TokWW]

I also agree with Alan, that we can ask Ken True to develope a small script to pull the temp data out and into a separate file with  time/date tag, station name and temperature .  Do you want me to ask him - but we would also need to know what style of database file we would need - a csv perhaps?  How should the file end?  Should there be  station counter field by the date/time tag? 

Dave - you might be able to help as well.   Not trying to shoot your offer to bits, but we do have the collection system working every five minutes and it should be easy to duplicate the temperatures into a new file.