21,700 stations, two continents, one function call: Atlantic Cloud data goes live in Julia

The AIR Centre has published its first software package AtlanticCloud.jl, making nearly 400 million weather records from Portugal and Brazil freely accessible to researchers, data scientists, and developers around the world.

The package connects to the Atlantic Cloud, a transatlantic data infrastructure operated by the AIR Centre and its partners, with nodes in Brazil and the Azores. Through a simple installation and a single query, users can now tap into observations from over 21,700 weather stations spanning 140 years, without dealing with the complexity that typically comes with accessing large scientific datasets.

AtlanticCloud.jl brings together two major datasets under a common roof: Portuguese multi-variable weather observations from IPMA and its partner networks, and Brazilian rainfall data from six national monitoring networks unified in the UNIPLU-BR dataset. The same tools, the same query patterns, and the same data structure apply to both, making cross-Atlantic comparisons more straightforward than ever.

The package is designed to fit naturally into existing scientific workflows. Data is returned ready to map, analyse, and visualise, with direct compatibility with popular tools in the scientific geospatial ecosystem. The example included with the package plots over 21,000 Brazilian weather stations on a map in just a few steps, with no manual data wrangling required.

While the current release focuses on meteorological data, AtlanticCloud.jl was designed with a broader vision in mind. The Atlantic Cloud already hosts satellite imagery and Earth observation data, and future versions of the package are planned to bring those datasets within reach using the same familiar tools.

AtlanticCloud.jl (v0.3.0) is open-source, MIT-licensed, and available now. It marks both the AIR Centre’s first contribution to the global open-source scientific software ecosystem and the first client library for the Atlantic Cloud.


Resources

This article: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19481613

Package repository: https://github.com/AIRCentre/AtlanticCloud.jl

Documentation: https://aircentre.github.io/AtlanticCloud.jl/

API documentation: https://services.aircentre.org/access/docs/meteorology

API key registration: https://services.aircentre.org/access/account