Our open data
To answer ‘when should I go?’ on every destination page, we needed figures that simply didn't exist in that form. Public climate normals are calculated per weather station, which is almost always an airport; travellers, on the other hand, want to know what the weather will be like where they're actually going. So we took the readings ourselves, at the exact spot of each destination.
These readings feed, first and foremost, our destination pages and the order of the stops in our itineraries. Rather than keep them to ourselves, we publish them: they're under a CC BY 4.0 licence, free for anyone to reuse, including commercially, as long as you credit us. The way the readings were taken is explained on the methodology page.
Monthly climate for 222 travel destinations
Temperatures, rainfall and sea temperature, month by month, for 222 destinations across all five continents. One row per destination per month, making 2,664 rows. Public climate normals are calculated per weather station, which is almost always an airport; these values are taken at the spot the traveller is actually heading to, including for eleven destinations with no station anywhere nearby.
Method. ERA5 reanalysis via the Open-Meteo API, 2015-2024 window, in each point's local time zone. The whole set was collected in a single pass, so every row comes from the same method. The calculation is reproducible: query the API again with the coordinates of any row and you'll get the published value.
Altitude of 1,697 tourist spots around the world
Altitude in metres of 1,697 named tourist spots across 222 destinations and 79 countries: cities, natural sites, mountain passes, beaches, temples, viewpoints and trailheads. Altitude is usually published per administrative unit; here it is measured at the spot itself, from the shore of the Dead Sea at −427 m to the Annapurna massif at 7,850 m.
Method. Open-Meteo's Elevation API, built on the Copernicus DEM GLO-90 digital elevation model (90 m grid). The whole set was collected in a single pass, so every row comes from the same method. The calculation is reproducible: query the API again with the coordinates of any row and you'll get the published value.
Sea temperature for 96 beach destinations
Sea surface temperature, month by month, for 96 beach destinations, making 1,152 rows. Each destination is tied to a coastal measurement point checked one by one; destinations whose reference point could not be confirmed were left out rather than published with an approximate value.
Method. Open-Meteo's Marine API, whose archive starts in 2023. The whole set was collected in a single pass, so every row comes from the same method. The calculation is reproducible: query the API again with the coordinates of any row and you'll get the published value.
What this data is not
These are not climate normals in the World Meteorological Organization sense, which are calculated over thirty years: they are averages over the window stated for each dataset. Each value describes the point given, not the country: ‘Bolivia’ is measured at the Salar de Uyuni, at 3,654 m. For named mountains and volcanoes, the point is the summit, not the place where the visitor stands.
How to cite us
The CC BY 4.0 licence requires attribution. The simplest form:
Off We Gooo, based on Open-Meteo (ERA5 reanalysis / Copernicus DEM), CC BY 4.0.
A question about the method, or need the data sliced a particular way? Write to [email protected].