[api.met.no] Changes to weather warnings and migration of api.met.no

[api.met.no mailing list]

Dear API users,

here are some important information about shortly forthcoming changes to the
MET Weather API:

1. Migration of api.met.no
==========================

As previously mentioned on the mailing list, we will shortly be migrating
the api.met.no domain to version 3. This has already been done for some users
and should be relatively painless, provided you follow the documentation[1]
and terms of use[2]. In particular we ask you to notice the following:

- Use HTTPS only! Unencrypted requests are no longer supported
- Honor redirects (301 and 303), which is used e.g. from HTTP to HTTPS
- Semicolon as parameter separator is now deprecated, use ampersand instead
- Make sure you have a unique, identifiable User-Agent string

Otherwise the main difference is a lot of new features and bugs that have
been fixed.

For more information on the changes to the interface, please see the release
notes[3] for version 3.

The migration is scheduled to take place some time during the first half of
January 2018.

2. Changes to weather warnings
==============================

>From 15 February 2018, there will be some changes in the weather warnings
available from the new Weather API.

Forecasts of the type *obs* and *gale* will no longer be available from
textforecast and textlocation, but will be replaced with warnings in the CAP
format (Commom Alerting Protocol Version 1.2), which is currently available
as an RSS feed at the metalerts service of the API [4].

For a documentation of the CAP format see [5].

- In the textlocation service, forecasts of type="obsforecast" and
type="gale" (in the location element) will no longer be present. These will
now instead be found in metalerts as event "gale".

- In the textforecast service, the following values for the forecast
parameter will no longer be allowed:

    gale
    gale_id
    obs
    obs_va
    obs_vn
    obs_vv

Instead these will be listed in metalerts according to event type, which may
include any of the following:

    wind
    gale
    rain
    snow
    rainFlood
    thunder
    blowingSnow
    stormSurge
    polarLow
    drivingConditions
    forestFire
    icing

To further emphasise this, the textforecast service will be bumped to
version 1.7.

Please don't hesitate to contact us at weatherapi-adm at met.no if you have
further questions.

Geir Aalberg
systems developer

Links:

[1]: https://beta.api.met.no/weatherapi/documentation
[2]: https://beta.api.met.no/conditions_service.html
[3]: https://beta.api.met.no/weatherapi/doc/v3relnotes
[4]: https://beta.api.met.no/weatherapi/metalerts/1.1/documentation
[5]: http://docs.oasis-open.org/emergency/cap/v1.2/CAP-v1.2-os.html