How we source and process climate data for 213 Australian cities and 500+ global locations.
SILO is a spatially interpolated climate database maintained by the Queensland Government's Department of Environment and Science. It provides high-quality climate data for Australia derived from Bureau of Meteorology observations and infilled gaps using spatial interpolation techniques.
SILO data is freely available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. It includes daily minimum and maximum temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, humidity, wind, and numerous derived variables.
For major Australian cities, we also use ACORN-SAT (Australian Climate Observations Reference Network, Station And Temperature), which is a quality-assured network of 112 long-term weather stations maintained by the Bureau of Meteorology.
ACORN-SAT stations provide the most reliable historical temperature data available for Australia. Data is freely available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
For 500+ global locations, RefDat uses Open-Meteo, which provides free historical and forecast weather data. Open-Meteo aggregates data from multiple sources including national meteorological services.
RefDat weather pages show both monthly climate averages (derived from 30-year normals) and recent daily weather. Climate averages are stable, long-term trends. Recent weather is current conditions and short-term trends. Understanding the difference is crucial.
RefDat calculates a "comfort score" for each location combining multiple factors:
These factors are weighted and combined into a 0-100 scale. A score of 80+ indicates excellent comfort conditions. A score below 40 indicates challenging conditions.
Each month on RefDat weather pages shows average values calculated from 30-year climate normals. For example, "January Average Max" shows the mean of the highest temperature recorded on each January day over 30 years.
RefDat also shows "Recent Average" for current months, which is the average of data collected so far this year.
RefDat weather pages cover all Australian cities and major towns with population over 3,000. This captures regional and remote locations while keeping data collection manageable. We also selected 500+ major global cities for international comparison.
RefDat pages include the Koppen-Geiger climate classification, which categorises climates using temperature and rainfall patterns. Australia's main climate zones include tropical, arid, temperate, and Mediterranean.
RefDat weather data is updated daily for recent observations and weekly for climate analyses. 30-year normals are recalculated every 10 years by the Bureau of Meteorology.
Visit Weather Data or read our article on understanding Australian climate data.