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Meteoblue

Meteoblue is a meteorological service company based in Basel, Switzerland, that specializes in delivering high-precision weather forecasts and climate data for any location on land or sea worldwide.^[1] Founded in 2006 as a spin-off from the University of Basel by Mathias Müller and colleagues, it originated from research on high-resolution numerical weather models initiated in 2002.^[1]^[2] The company offers a range of services, including free weather forecasts via its website and mobile apps, premium subscriptions for advanced features, and business-oriented solutions such as APIs, high-resolution simulations, and climate risk assessments tailored to industries like renewable energy, agriculture, and urban planning.^[1]^[3] Meteoblue employs a proprietary MultiModel approach, integrating over 30 weather simulation models, AI algorithms, and data from more than 100,000 weather stations to achieve superior forecast accuracy.^[4]^[1] As of 2024, it serves over 72 million website users and more than 3,000 business customers across 100 countries, with notable achievements including ISO 9001 certification in 2022 and partnerships such as providing real-time weather data for Microsoft Flight Simulator.^[4]^[1]^[5] In June 2024, Czech-based Windyty, S.E., acquired a majority stake in meteoblue, aiming to combine their technologies for enhanced global weather visualization and forecasting capabilities.^[4]

History

Founding

Meteoblue originated as a research project at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 2002, where initial development focused on meteorological modeling.^[1] The project was initiated by Mathias Müller, a co-founder who developed proprietary high-resolution numerical weather models during his time at the university.^[1] By 2006, the initiative had evolved into an independent entity through a spin-off process from the University of Basel, resulting in the establishment of meteoblue AG.^[2] This transition included setting up dedicated computing infrastructure to support ongoing model computations outside the academic environment.^[1] From its inception, meteoblue emphasized creating high-resolution weather simulations tailored for local forecasts, aiming to provide precise, location-specific predictions.^[1]

Key milestones

In 2004, meteoblue launched its first proprietary weather simulation model, NMM2, focused on Switzerland with a high resolution of 2 km and hourly updates, marking an early advancement in localized numerical weather prediction developed in collaboration with the University of Basel.^[1] The company introduced the global weather archive in 2013, providing users with access to simulated historical weather data for any location worldwide, initially covering five years of hourly records and later expanded to enable continuous simulations dating back to 1940 through integration with reanalysis datasets like ERA5.^[6]^[7] In 2014, meteoblue implemented MultiModel forecasts, pioneering the public availability of ensemble diagrams that integrate outputs from over 40 global and regional weather models, enhanced by machine learning for improved probabilistic predictions.^[1] Meteoblue achieved ISO 9001 certification in 2022, validating its quality management systems for weather and climate data services, including rigorous processes for data accuracy, customer support, and operational efficiency.^[1] The following year, in 2023, the company developed climate risk assessment tools, delivering location-specific reports that evaluate future physical risks under IPCC Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios up to 2100, supporting regulatory compliance such as the EU Taxonomy and CSRD.^[1]^[8]^[9] In 2024, Windyty, S.E., the operator of the global weather platform Windy.com, acquired a majority stake in meteoblue, fostering synergies in data integration, model development, and service expansion to enhance worldwide weather forecasting capabilities.^[1]^[10] In 2025, meteoblue expanded its observed weather maps by incorporating thousands of new high-quality weather stations from various European countries and Australia, improving data accuracy and model integration.^[11]

Products and services

Weather forecasting tools

Meteoblue provides free access to local weather forecasts through its website, meteoblue.com, enabling users to obtain predictions for over 8 million locations worldwide by searching via place name, postal code, or geographic coordinates. This service delivers real-time and short-term forecasts tailored for everyday users, with an emphasis on precision through a clean, intuitive interface that prioritizes essential weather information without unnecessary clutter. The platform integrates data from high-resolution simulations to produce forecasts for both land and sea areas, extending up to 14 days ahead with hourly, three-hourly, or daily intervals.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15] A hallmark of Meteoblue's forecasting tools is its iconic wind animation maps, first introduced in 2006, which visualize wind patterns through animated particles overlaid on forecast layers to depict movement, direction, and speed across global scales. These maps have set an industry standard for dynamic weather visualization, allowing users to observe evolving wind flows in real time or over forecast periods. Complementing this, Meteoblue offers 10-meter temperature maps generated from hyperlocal simulations, providing detailed spatial resolutions down to 10 meters in select urban areas to highlight temperature variations influenced by topography and urban heat effects.^[16]^[17]^[18] Real-time updates are enhanced by incorporating observations from over 100,000 weather stations worldwide, which calibrate the models and support AI-driven refinements for improved accuracy in nowcasting and short-term predictions. This integration ensures that forecasts reflect current conditions, such as precipitation and wind, while the platform's MultiModel approach briefly combines outputs from multiple simulations to estimate forecast reliability without delving into complex derivations. Users benefit from an ad-free option via subscription, further streamlining access to these tools for focused, distraction-free planning.^[4]^[19]^[20]

Historical and climate data services

Meteoblue's history+ subscription service provides access to gap-free historical weather simulations for any location worldwide, dating back to 1940 with hourly temporal resolution.^[21] This service assembles archived simulations into continuous time series, enabling users to retrieve comprehensive past weather data without interruptions, which supports detailed retrospective analyses such as environmental impact studies or agricultural planning.^[7] The data is derived from global weather models re-run for historical periods to fill gaps in observational records.^[22] The service includes interactive analysis tools designed to visualize frequency patterns in key meteorological variables. Histograms illustrate the distribution of temperature, precipitation, and wind speeds over selected time periods, allowing users to assess variability and extremes.^[22] Wind roses provide graphical representations of wind direction and intensity, highlighting directional patterns and aiding in applications like site suitability evaluations for renewable energy projects.^[23] These tools facilitate conceptual understanding of historical weather behaviors rather than raw data dumps. In 2023, Meteoblue launched climate+, a service offering simulations of future climate projections based on IPCC emission scenarios, such as SSP2-4.5, extending to 2100 for risk assessments.^[24] This includes graphical summaries of projected changes in variables like temperature and precipitation, supporting long-term planning for climate adaptation.^[25] Complementing these are year-over-year comparison tools within history+, which visualize trends and anomalies across decades, alongside frequency pattern diagrams to identify shifts in weather regimes.^[21] The unique continuous archives in history+ cover over 80 years of simulated data globally, enabling in-depth studies of long-term meteorological evolution without the limitations of sparse station observations.^[7] This gap-free approach ensures reliable baselines for comparing historical conditions to projected climate futures under IPCC scenarios.^[26]

Business and API solutions

Meteoblue provides tailored weather data services for professional sectors including renewable energy, agriculture, media, and public stakeholders, enabling informed decision-making through high-precision simulations and forecasts. In the renewable energy field, the company offers customized solutions for solar and wind power management, such as site assessments and yield optimization using detailed atmospheric data. For agriculture, services support farm management by providing variables for irrigation planning, crop risk assessment, and fieldwork timing. Media companies benefit from integrated weather content for websites and apps, while public entities like transport authorities access real-time warnings and logistics planning tools.^[27] The core of these offerings is the meteoblue Weather API suite, which allows seamless integration of historical, forecast, and climate data into third-party applications via high-speed HTTP requests. Key APIs include the Forecast API, delivering up to 14-day hourly predictions across over 100 variables like wind speed, solar radiation, and precipitation, tailored for business use cases; the Dataset API, granting access to a global database spanning 1940 to present with hourly resolutions for historical analysis and machine learning training; and the Maps API for visualizing radar and satellite imagery. These APIs support scalable data delivery for single points, polygons, or administrative areas, with on-the-fly computations for aggregations and interpolations to ensure efficiency without advertising interruptions.^[28]^[29] Businesses subscribe to premium access levels—such as Silver, Gold, or Enterprise—for enhanced features like ad-free content, higher call limits (up to 50,000 API calls monthly at base levels), and specialized variables for industries. Pricing operates on a usage-based credit system, with simple calls consuming fewer credits than complex ones involving advanced variables, allowing scalability from self-service to custom enterprise solutions. Notable clients include Siemens Germany, which utilizes meteoblue data for renewable energy site assessments, wind and PV power production; PerPetum Energy for green energy management; Pexapark for optimizing wind and solar operations; TechnoFarm for precision agriculture software; and RTL Netherlands for powering its Buienradar weather platform. These partnerships demonstrate meteoblue's role in delivering continuous, reliable data streams that drive operational efficiency across sectors.^[3]^[30]^[31]

Technology

Modeling techniques

Meteoblue employs a MultiModel approach that integrates outputs from over 40 global and regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to generate ensemble forecasts, leveraging machine learning techniques to combine data for enhanced accuracy beyond individual models.^[1] This method aggregates proprietary and third-party simulations, primarily from national weather services, by applying post-processing algorithms that weigh model performances based on historical validations and current observations.^[32] The company's proprietary high-resolution models originated with the NMM2 simulation in 2004, which provided 2 km grid spacing for Switzerland and was run daily with hourly updates.^[1] This evolved into the NMM family of regional models, operational since 2007 and optimized for complex topography, featuring resolutions as fine as 4 km over Central Europe with forecast horizons up to 180 hours.^[33] By 2013, meteoblue introduced the NEMS models as a multiscale successor, capable of nested global-to-local simulations at 30 km globally and 4 km regionally, incorporating improved physics for clouds and precipitation, with data archives extending back to 1984 at hourly intervals.^[33] For historical reanalysis, meteoblue utilizes NWP simulations combined with data assimilation techniques to produce gap-free datasets that reconstruct past weather conditions, blending measurements, observations, and model outputs without forecasting intent.^[34] These efforts support proprietary reanalysis products alongside third-party sources like ERA5, ensuring continuous coverage for periods dating back decades, with resolutions varying from 5 km regionally to 30 km globally.^[34] Artificial intelligence plays a central role in model optimization through the meteoblue Learning MultiModel (mLM), a proprietary post-processing system that applies machine learning to NWP outputs, selecting and weighting the most accurate models for variables like temperature, wind speed, and dew point.^[35] Introduced in 2018 and refined in 2024, mLM incorporates current weather measurements to downscale forecasts to local scales, achieving improvements such as 0.8 K better accuracy than standalone NWP for 24-hour temperature predictions and enabling station-level precision.^[35] This AI-driven approach extends to 10-meter wind resolutions by interpolating from multiple stations and model grids. Ensemble methods further refine forecast precision by generating multiple simulations with varied initial conditions to quantify uncertainties from chaotic atmospheric dynamics and model limitations, ensuring that verified outcomes typically fall within the predicted range.^[36] In the MultiModel framework, these ensembles weight model agreements dynamically, with high-resolution proprietary runs complemented by traditional ensembles like GFS to cover lead times up to 14 days, particularly for precipitation and large-scale patterns.^[37]

Data integration and visualization

Meteoblue integrates real-time data from over 100,000 global weather stations and sensors, alongside inputs from national weather services, to enhance the accuracy of its weather simulations.^[38] This extensive network includes ground-based observations, which are assimilated into numerical weather prediction models to initialize and refine global weather states.^[39] Satellite imagery and radar data are also processed to capture precipitation patterns and atmospheric conditions, with techniques such as downscaling and machine learning applied in post-processing to validate outputs against these observations.^[39] For visualization, Meteoblue employs advanced tools that present integrated data through interactive and animated maps, illustrating variables like wind speed and direction, temperature gradients, and precipitation accumulation in real time.^[40] These maps feature seamless animations and customizable layers, allowing users to overlay radar and satellite feeds for dynamic overviews without interruptions from advertising in premium interfaces.^[41] The platform's MultiModel ensemble approach further supports this by combining multiple data sources to reduce visualization uncertainties, ensuring high-fidelity representations.^[39] In historical and climate data analysis, Meteoblue offers user-friendly graphics such as interactive histograms for frequency patterns of temperature and precipitation, enabling identification of extreme events over decades.^[21] Wind roses provide a polar visualization of wind direction and speed distributions, customizable for specific locations and time periods to support pattern recognition in sectors like renewable energy.^[21] These tools prioritize precision and accessibility, delivering high-resolution outputs derived from assimilated observational data without reliance on commercial overlays.^[40]

Company overview

Ownership and structure

Meteoblue operates as meteoblue AG, a Swiss corporation headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, where it was formally established in 2006.^[1]^[42] With research origins at the University of Basel in 2002, the company was established as an independent spin-off, meteoblue AG, in 2006, focusing on commercial weather services while retaining a research-oriented foundation.^[1]^[43] This structure allowed meteoblue to develop its own computing infrastructure, including a high-speed computer cluster and dedicated web servers, to support reliable weather simulations and data distribution.^[44]^[45] In June 2024, Windyty, S.E., a Czech-based weather technology company operating the Windy.com platform, acquired a majority stake in meteoblue AG, marking a strategic merger to enhance global weather services while preserving meteoblue's operational independence.^[46]^[10] Post-acquisition, meteoblue continues as a distinct entity under this ownership, evolving from its research origins into a commercial provider with robust, self-sustained infrastructure.^[1] The company's structure supports a global reach, delivering weather and climate data for any location on land or sea worldwide, with services available in multiple languages including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and others to serve diverse international users.^[1]^[47]^[48]

Certifications and achievements

In 2022, meteoblue achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification for its quality management system, encompassing weather and climate data services, as verified by Bureau Veritas, with ongoing validity through recertification.^[49] This certification underscores the company's commitment to high standards in service delivery, organization, and staff performance.^[1] The meteoblue team comprises a core of meteorologists and software developers, fostering innovation in weather modeling and data applications.^[50] Leadership is provided by co-founder Dr. Mathias Müller, who serves as Chief Technical Officer and board member, guiding technical strategy since the company's origins at the University of Basel in 2002.^[50] Key roles include meteorological experts such as Thomas Eldridge and developers like Simon Leber, enabling seamless integration of scientific and technological expertise.^[50] Meteoblue has received recognition for its contributions to weather and climate services, including high-precision forecasts and sustainability tools for industries such as renewable energy.^[1]

References

[1]
About us - meteoblue
At meteoblue, we are dedicated to delivering the highest-quality weather and climate data for any location on land or sea, anywhere in the world.Business partners · What users say · Meteoblue in the news · Top precision
[2]
[PDF] meteoblue AG Greifengasse 38 CH-4058 Basel - Kellerhals Carrard
Jun 11, 2024 · meteoblue founder, Mathias Müller, added: "From our humble beginnings at the University of Basel to leading technological advancements in ...Missing: headquarters | Show results with:headquarters<|control11|><|separator|>
[3]
Weather APIs | Forecast & History Data - meteoblue
The meteoblue Weather API provides access to the world's largest weather database, allowing for quick and easy retrieval of weather and environmental data.<|separator|>
[4]
Accurate weather forecast provider meteoblue joins Windy.com
Jun 14, 2024 · Established in 2006 as a spin-off from the University of Basel, meteoblue AG has grown into a global service provider with over 72 million ...Missing: headquarters | Show results with:headquarters
[5]
Meteoblue constantly presents new developments
Nov 26, 2020 · In 2006, meteoblue was founded as an independent company with headquarters in Basel. ... Müller, founder and president of meteoblue. The ...
[6]
Weather history - new archive - meteoblue
Oct 4, 2013 · Posted on 2013-10-04 by (meteoblue) ... meteoblue opens the weather history, an archive of 5 years of weather data for every place in the world.Missing: global | Show results with:global
[7]
Historical weather data since 1940 with history+ - meteoblue
Jun 19, 2023 · The hourly data is available from 1984 onwards. ERA5 reanalysis model with 30 km resolution, available globally since 1940. This dataset is ...
[8]
Climate risk assessments - meteoblue
Mar 17, 2023 · meteoblue offers location-specific climate risk assessment reports that evaluate the potential future climate change risk for any location worldwide.
[9]
Climate Risk Assessment - meteoblue
meteoblue offers a solution for physical climate risk assessment which is optimised for regulatory purposes, such as the EU Taxonomy and CSRD.Missing: 2023 | Show results with:2023
[10]
Windyty, S.E. Acquires Majority Stake in meteoblue, A.G. - Windy
Jun 12, 2024 · Established in 2006 by Mathias Müller and colleagues as a spin-off from the University of Basel, meteoblue has grown into a global service ...Missing: independent infrastructure
[11]
Global Location Search - meteoblue
The Global Location Search allows you to select any location on Earth using map, text, or coordinate search, with 8 million places available.
[12]
Location names - meteoblue
meteoblue provides 8 million different location names including place names, postal codes, administrative areas and many more.Missing: worldwide | Show results with:worldwide
[13]
Location Search API - Technical Documentation - meteoblue
Aug 6, 2024 · The meteoblue Location Search API resolves location names, postal codes, icao and iata codes to standardised WGS84 latitude and longitude coordinates.Missing: worldwide | Show results with:worldwide
[14]
14-Day Weather - meteoblue
The Meteogram 14-Day shows the weather forecast for the next 14 days period, with weather symbols, a range of maximum, average and minimum temperatures and ...Description · Temperature · Precipitation
[15]
Weather Maps - meteoblue
The maps are available worldwide, with the size and resolution depending on the desired area, variable, time and model resolution.
[16]
New wind animation map with air flows - meteoblue
Jul 20, 2020 · Our new wind animation shows the weather "on the move" and expands the scope beyond the wind movement, direction and velocity.
[17]
Urban Heat Maps - MeteoBlue
Urban Heat Maps close to you. The 10 m spatial resolution of the Urban Heat Maps is achieved through state-of-the-art high-resolution air temperature ...
[18]
Ad-free - meteoblue
meteoblue Ad-free enables you to use of the functionalities you know from our website, without any advertisements and commercials, or any form of tracking.Missing: interface | Show results with:interface
[19]
MultiModel - meteoblue
The Meteogram MultiModel shows and compares the forecasts of each model. It is an addition to the meteogram and shows data at the altitude of the respective ...Missing: 2014 | Show results with:2014
[20]
history+ | Weather History & Archive - meteoblue
Find over 80 years of historical weather data with history+ ✓ Hourly resolution ✓ High accuracy ✓ Worldwide.Data Download · Wind Rose · Year ComparisonMissing: key timeline
[21]
history+ - meteoblue
You can create, print and compare historical weather data, identify and analyse frequencies, download several graphs or historical data by using history+. To ...Missing: key timeline
[22]
Wind Rose - MeteoBlue
This wind rose displays the distribution where the wind is coming from and with which intensity. Only marked areas on the map have high resolution.
[23]
meteoblue launches new website product: climate+
Apr 24, 2023 · climate+ offers instant access to data for climate predictions and climate risk assessments and is the perfect data solution to fulfil the ...
[24]
climate+ - meteoblue
meteoblue offers location-specific climate risk assessment reports that evaluate the potential risk in the future related to climate change for several climate ...
[25]
history+ with historical weather data since 1960 - meteoblue
Mar 8, 2023 · The latest history+ update extends the time range of historical weather data to more than 60 years, for any place on Earth.
[26]
Climate Data & Visuals - meteoblue
The meteoblue climate prediction offers an easy summary of complex climate change simulations for any location on Earth, based on different emission scenarios ...
[27]
Individual Weather Solutions for your Industry - meteoblue
meteoblue forecast domains provide high resolution weather data over large areas. Thus, our models resolve local wind systems, by the land-sea winds or flow ...
[28]
Weather Forecast API | High-Accuracy Weather Data - meteoblue
The Forecast API uses nowcasting and the meteoblue Learning MultiModel (mLM) to deliver up to 14 days of hourly forecasts at maximum accuracy.Missing: tools | Show results with:tools
[29]
Weather Dataset API | Advanced Weather Data - meteoblue
Our extensive weather database is tailored to aid in specific use cases for a variety of sectors, such as insurance, agriculture and renewable energy. The wide ...
[30]
Siemens Germany - meteoblue
Siemens uses meteoblue services for: Renewable energy site assessment; Wind power production; PV power production; Building management. An example is shown here ...
[31]
Clients - meteoblue
meteoblue is serving clients from different sectors like energy and farm management to media companies and many other industries to public stakeholders.
[32]
Third party models - meteoblue
The models are combined - by applying modern machine learning techniques - to a multimodel forecast that reaches a much higher accuracy than any of the single ...
[33]
meteoblue models
meteoblue models simulate physical processes using grid cells, run twice daily, and include NEMS and NMM models, with NEMS being a multiscale model.
[34]
Reanalysis datasets - meteoblue
Meteorological reanalysis data are produced by combining measurement, observation and simulation data and applying data assimilation techniques.
[35]
meteoblue Learning MultiModel (mLM)
The meteoblue Learning MultiModel (mLM) is a new technique of post-processing the output from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models using current weather ...
[36]
Ensemble Forecasting - meteoblue
Ensemble forecasting is a numerical prediction method that generates multiple representative calculations of the possible future states of the weather.
[37]
MultiModel Ensemble - meteoblue
Weather models simulate physical processes. A weather model divides the world or a region into small grid-cells. Each cell is about 4km to 40km wide and 100m to ...
[38]
Top precision - meteoblue
Meteoblue offers the highest publicly documented accuracy, using hyperlocal models (10m resolution), a complex process chain, and a unique Learning MultiModel.Missing: tools | Show results with:tools<|control11|><|separator|>
[39]
Data sources - meteoblue
Location names - More than 8 million place names available · Population density - worldwide population distribution · Topography - digital elevation model in high ...
[40]
Plug & Play visuals - meteoblue
Our tools offer versatile, customisable weather data visualisations to engage and inform your audience. Elevate user experience, boost SEO, and drive traffic.Weather Widgets · meteoTV · Astronomy WidgetMissing: visualization | Show results with:visualization
[41]
point+ | Premium Weather Data - meteoblue
Access to specialised diagrams, maps and tools with high precision weather forecasts. point+ offers detailed insights for planning and decision making ...
[42]
meteoblue ag in Basel - Reports - Moneyhouse
meteoblue ag in Basel ✓ active ✓ Founded 2006 ✓ Management: Jan Šimek et al. ✓ Last change: 24.09.2025 ✓ Architectural and engineering activities.Missing: spin- University
[43]
Meteoblue - 2025 Company Profile, Funding & Competitors - Tracxn
Meteoblue is an acquired company based in Basel (Switzerland), founded in 2006. It operates as a Weather forecasting & weather data company.Missing: headquarters | Show results with:headquarters
[44]
Infrastructure - meteoblue
meteoblue operates a high speed computer cluster and dedicated web servers. This allows us to reliably compute high resolution weather simulations.Missing: spin- off independent
[45]
Weather does not influence Coronavirus infections, meteoblue study ...
Mar 25, 2020 · Meteoblue was founded as a company in 2006, to ensure reliable operational forecasts and to better service the industry; an independent ...
[46]
https://www.meteoblue.com/en/blog/article/show/40369_Windyty%252C%2BS.E.%2BAcquires%2BMajority%2BStake%2Bin%2Bmeteoblue%252C%2BA.G
[47]
Languages - meteoblue
We offer documentation in the languages of the major user markets. Currently, these are English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Technical ...Missing: coverage | Show results with:coverage
[48]
meteoblue weather & maps - App Store - Apple
Rating 4.8 (3,597) · Free · iOS- Wind Animation: Watch global wind movement with color-coded temperature indicators. - Satellite & Radar Maps: View observed cloud cover (with lightning ...
[49]
[PDF] ISO 9001:2015 certificate - meteoblue
Date of initial certification : Date of recertification : 24.06.2022. 22.05.2025. End of the last certification cycle : Start of the new certification cycle:.
[50]
Team - meteoblue
Mathias Müller. Chief Technical Officer. Board member. Dr. Karl G. Gutbrod. Chief Strategy Officer. Board member. Léo Rocher. Head of IT. Michael Bührer. Head ...