Azure Maps Weather Services adds three new services

Published Friday, February 18, 2022

Azure Maps Weather Services, which became generally available in April 2021, has added three new services, Historical Weather, Air Quality, and Tropical Storms. The Azure Maps Weather Services data comes from our leading worldwide weather service provider AccuWeather. The addition of these three new services will empower developers and companies to expand capabilities even further when it comes to weather data.

Historical Weather

The Historical Weather API provides actuals, normals, and records climatology data by day, for a specified date range, up to 31 days in a single API request. Historical data may be available as far back as 5 to 40+ years and includes temperatures, precipitation, snowfall, snow depth, and cooling/heating degree day information, depending on the location and feature.

Historical Weather data enables customers to get past climatology information to analyze and helps to make predictions on future weather conditions and support making informed business decisions. Historical Weather data can be used for many use cases such as forensics, weather studies, and most commonly for business analytics to determine how past weather impacted logistics, sales, and other business scenarios. For example, you can predict what products will sell better by specific weather conditions by adding weather data to your sales records or predicting the best time to change to winter tires for your location.

Air Quality

The Air Quality API provides detailed information about the current and forecasted air pollutants and air quality concentration. Forecasted information is available by the hour (upcoming 1, 12, 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours) and by day (upcoming 1 to 7 days). Information includes pollution levels, air quality index values, dominant pollutants, and a brief statement summarizing risk levels and suggested precautions.

If you are building an outdoor running/cycling app, you can warn your users if the air quality conditions are better in one hour or analyze the impact on your health by tracking what kind of air you breathe. Air Quality info can be used on everything from outdoor sensors, devices used by people while commuting, working, exercising, and other outside activities to indoor use with HVAC and air purifiers or general monitoring of an area.

Tropical Storms

The Tropical Storms API provides information on government-issued active and forecasted tropical storms, the locations (path), and the ability to search government-issued tropical storms by year. Information includes; location coordinates, forecast, creation date, status, geometry, basin ID, window, wind speed, and wind radii. Tropical storms are also known as hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons, depending on the region of the world.

Tropical Storms info can be used to get useful observational and forecast data on current storms or to research details from previous tropical storm events for business intelligence and public safety purposes.