Dr. Simon Clarke is a senior lecturer from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University. He’s been granted permission by the Bureau of Meteorology to repackage its observational and forecasting Melbourne weather data for downstream analysis and visualisations. Weather data from the bureau is downloaded and processed at regular 10 minute intervals. Various metrics and visualisations are then computed using a custom-made MATLAB batch script developed in-house. The resulting output is then fed to a web server for public presentation with integrations to other external sites hosted by the bureau. The original weather server was housed on a “legacy” hosting platform, that had reached its end of life. The Melbourne weather server needed a new home.

Melbourne Weather Server

The R@CMon team engaged with Simon to scope the various weather server’s hosting requirements. Aside from the traditional LAMP-style type of hosting required, the server also needed direct access to MATLAB’s batch mode functionality. A new R@CMon-hosted instance was deployed on the Monash node of the NeCTAR Research Cloud. With it, a standard LAMP stack was also installed and configured. A Monash University-licensed installation of MATLAB has been made available onto the new weather server, allowing the downstream analysis of the raw data from the bureau to be conducted.

Melbourne Weather Server Visits for 2017

The new Melbourne weather server is now publicly accessible and available across world. The regular live feed is serving the Australian and international community providing live Melbourne weather observations and forecasts. With the support of the R@CMon team, it will continue to do so for more years to come.