Are there any weather *history* apis?

Question

There are plenty of weather APIs that allow you to find forecasts, but I'm looking for weather history. Specifically, if I have a lat/lng and a timestamp, I'm looking to find the weather at that moment in that location in the past.

I've looked through many different APIs including the National Weather Service and Weather Underground, but haven't seen any API that solves the problem I describe. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You probably want to look at the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). They provide and archive a lot of the meteorology datasets. We have looked at datasets going back to the 40's. you are likely going to need build and write your own parser for your dataset - older stuff predates mag tape in met144 and the like.

Answer 2

Is your data limited to the USA?

• A similar question on SO provided this link: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/xml/
• Companies like RMS, EQECAT and AIR are usually more concerned with weather prediction but for a (large) fee they may supply historical data.