Meteoblue (stylized as meteoblue) is a meteorological service created at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...

, Switzerland. In 2006, Meteoblue was then founded as a spin-off company in order to serve customers especially in the area of

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

as well as solar and

wind power Wind power or wind energy is mostly the use of wind turbines to generate electricity. Wind power is a popular, sustainable, renewable energy source that has a much smaller impact on the environment than burning fossil fuels. Historically ...

. The impetus for the creation of this service came with the Sandoz chemical disaster near

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

in 1986. During the fire, health and safety services tried to get information pertaining to the wind direction in order to protect the population from poisonous and noxious gases. After receiving conflicting information from Swiss, French and German meteorological services – Basel is located at the

tripoint A tripoint, trijunction, triple point, or tri-border area is a geographical point at which the boundaries of three countries or subnational entities meet. There are 175 international tripoints as of 2020. Nearly half are situated in rivers, l ...

of these three countries – researchers at the local university formed th
Institute for Meteorology, Climatology and Remote Sensing
intending to model the local weather situation more precisely. As this meteorological service did not yet have its own dedicated data center,

weather prediction Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the tr ...

s offered through the university's website were not available at all times, but the service soon grew into a favoured information source for alpinists, para-gliders, astronomers and farmers. After the transition to a privately run meteorological company, Meteoblue was the world's first weather service to offer weather prediction in a graphical synopsis for any arbitrarily chosen location on earth. Beside that, it predicts weather for several

continent A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas t ...

s on scales not familiar from other weather services, e.g. Europe using a 3 km (1.86 mi) grid, encompassing an area containing Belarus, Greece, Portugal and Ireland, or sub-Saharan Africa using a 10 km grid. Both Non-Hydrostatic Mesoscale Models (NMM, developed by NOAA) and the NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) are used to predict weather. Weather service is still publicly available, supported by ads, on its website, and the university's meteorological research institute still links to Meteoblue's weather predictions. In 2020, Asobo partnered with Meteoblue to generate and deliver accurate weather conditions to the users of ''

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 ''Microsoft Flight Simulator'' (colloquially known as ''Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020'') is an amateur flight simulator developed by Asobo Studio and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is an entry in the ''Microsoft Flight Simulator'' series ...

''.

Sources

* http://www.basellandschaftlichezeitung.ch/basel/basel-stadt/basler-anbieter-prognostiziert-das-wetter-fuer-die-ganze-welt-126964541 (Newspaper report in German, July 29, 2013) * https://content.meteoblue.com/en/about-us

External links

* http://www.meteoblue.com web site of meteoblue Meteorological companies Information technology companies of Switzerland {{Switzerland-company-stub