How Climate Data Is Collected: Weather Stations to Satellites

2026-05-01

Climate data collection has evolved dramatically over the past century. In the early 1900s, scientists relied on mercury thermometers and rain gauges manually read by observers at fixed stations. Today, a global network of over 10,000 automated weather stations, ocean buoys, weather balloons, and satellites continuously feeds data into centralized databases. The Open-Meteo project aggregates this data from national meteorological services worldwide, making decades of historical weather data freely accessible

. Satellites like those in the EOS family measure surface temperature, cloud cover, and solar radiation from space. Weather radar networks track precipitation in real-time. Ocean-based instruments monitor sea surface temperatures and currents. All this data is quality-controlled, homogenized, and made available through standardized APIs that power applications like ClimateExplorer..