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I'm interested in understanding how meteorology works in Canada (esp. from an Open Data perspective).

Can someone explain, or provide resources, that indicates an overview of the actors involved on the spectrum from initial data measurement through to the weatherperson on the TV screen?

My main concern is to understand if data is made freely available, but I am also interested in the various players and their position in the public/private sector. (I feel that this is relatively well documented for the USA, but I can't find the story in Canada).

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    $\begingroup$ did you look here: weather.gc.ca what isn't there that you are looking for? $\endgroup$ – farrenthorpe Dec 2 '15 at 3:40
  • $\begingroup$ I'm looking for a workflow that traces data from the initial readings to the TV/radio weather-person. The site you listed has a lot of information but not the overall flow. Also, it appears mostly to be on the government side: the TV weatherperson doesn't work for Environment Canada, so when does the data cross over from the public sector to the private sector? $\endgroup$ – Michael Easter Dec 3 '15 at 0:17
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Canada is fairly similar to the US in how this works. As pointed out in a comment, Environment Canada is the primary provider of observation and forecast data within Canada. You can access plots of this data and somewhere on that site you can probably also get access to the raw data files to process on your own.

Canada also partners with other states to provide data globally that others can use, some of which provide global model products such as ECMWF and NOAA. The data from the Euro is not completely open but the data from the GFS is freely available.

The person on TV is working with their fellow station meteorologists and often under a chief meteorologist. They are going to look at data provided by Environment Canada observations and model output, global model data from others and perhaps private sector weather provider companies who themselves ingest all of that data and have operational meteorologists on staff.

The general flows of data will be

  1. Observations taken by Environment Canada are ingested
  2. Data is shared with other weather agencies, Canada ingests global weather from others
  3. EC runs forecast models
  4. EC makes observational and model data available

Private sector companies may use a workflow like:

  1. Ingest data from government sources
  2. Process data, run models, make forecasts
  3. Make that data available to clients

TV stations will have a flow like:

  1. Ingest data from EC, global models and possibly private sector companies
  2. Interpret data and make local forecasts
  3. Present forecasts to the public.
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  • $\begingroup$ This is a terrific answer! To encourage more answers/discussion, I'm leaving the question unanswered for a day or two, but this is hard to beat. $\endgroup$ – Michael Easter Dec 4 '15 at 10:31

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