Thunderstorms, floods, cloudbursts, droughts. Faced with increasingly extreme weather events driven by climate change, even the most robust organizational strategies are often no longer sufficient on their own.

In sectors such as agriculture, livestock farming, transportation, infrastructure management, and resource planning, the ability to anticipate weather events can help prevent significant losses.

Access to high-resolution weather data, climate data, and accurate weather forecasts enables organizations to reduce uncertainty and plan actions based on their specific operational needs. This is why innovative tools and advanced weather data platforms are being developed to deliver meteorological products and services tailored to different types of users and use cases.

Accurate weather data and meteorological products on a single platform: MeteoHub

Reliable weather forecasts are the result of multiple combined factors: deterministic and probabilistic models, high-quality observational data, powerful computing resources, and expert meteorologists capable of performing informed evaluations.

So where can businesses find reliable data and meteorological products for Italy?

The national MeteoHub platform, managed by Agenzia ItaliaMeteo in collaboration with Cineca, provides centralized access to weather data and meteorological products for Italy, made easily accessible through interactive maps and open data, all available from a single entry point.

On MeteoHub, users can explore a wide range of forecast maps, from short-term to seasonal-range, and access a digital ecosystem designed for the management, sharing, and valorisation of weather data.

The platform enables structured data distribution and access to a variety of downloadable weather datasets for advanced analysis and professional applications, including:

• forecast data produced by Italian meteorological institutions
• observational real-time data from regional meteorological networks
• radar data provided by the Italian Civil Protection Department (DPC)

Uno strumento a supporto delle attività quotidiane: le previsioni meteo a breve termine

Accurate and timely short-term weather forecasts are essential for reducing risks to infrastructure and enabling effective resource management, particularly for water resources. In sectors such as agriculture and livestock farming, reliable weather forecasts support irrigation planning, crop treatments, and animal welfare management.

MeteoHub provides accurate short-term forecasts through two visualization modes:

• a multi-layer interactive map, showing hourly forecasts up to three days ahead, with multiple meteorological variables including temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, and cloud cover
• a static map, allowing users to select specific weather parameters and geographic areas across Italy

In addition, marine forecast maps are available, offering hourly weather forecasts over the Mediterranean Sea up to three days ahead. By visualizing wave direction, height, and period, these products are particularly valuable for maritime transport and marine operations.

Planning medium and long-term activities: weekly and monthly weather forecasts

Medium and long-term weather trends, such as monthly and seasonal forecasts, are widely used in sectors including agriculture, tourism, energy, and climate risk management, especially for extreme events such as heatwaves and droughts.

Building on seasonal forecasts produced by ECMWF, taliaMeteo works to improve medium- and long-term weather forecasts by correcting biases and increasing spatial resolution, adapting outputs specifically to the Italian territory.

Available MeteoHub meteorological products include:

• weekly forecast maps, displaying probabilistic scenarios for temperature and precipitation across the Mediterranean region, along with forecast charts for Italian regional capitals and major European cities
• monthly forecast maps, showing temperature and precipitation outlooks for the current month and the following three months, with interactive maps that include detailed views for all Italian provincial capitals

In fact, long-term forecasting not only enables more effective activity planning by managing potential resource shortages or surpluses, but also supports crop selection, transport and resource distribution planning, and the adaptation of materials and processes to extreme weather events, ultimately helping to build more climate-resilient systems.

Open and accessible weather data: building custom meteorological products

MeteoHub also offers additional services, including over 40 open datasets of weather data, covering meteorological and marine models, observational data, and DPC radar data.

Weather datasets can be downloaded as pre-packaged data products or customized according to user needs, and further processed to develop tailored meteorological products and climate services.

Optimized meteorological data and AI-based models: the future of weather forecasting

Among the services available on MeteoHub is MeteoARCO, an innovative project providing fast and scalable access to meteorological datasets converted into Analysis-Ready, Cloud-Optimized (ARCO) formats.

Based on the Zarr data format, this technology enables the development of new machine learning and artificial intelligence applications built on pre-processed and optimized weather data.

Currently, marine forecast and radar datasets are available on the platform, with additional forecast datasets and climate data products planned for future release, supporting research, enterprises, and developers.

How to use data and weather forecasts to support your business

The most effective way to understand how meteorological data, climate data, and weather forecasts can support your organization is to engage directly with experts who work with these tools on a daily basis.

MeteoHub is part of the Earth pillar of IT4LIA AI Factory, which includes, alongside Agenzia ItaliaMeteo, Fondazione Bruno Kessler as a key partner.

Within this pillar, IT4LIA develops Artificial Intelligence models dedicated to weather forecasting, climate modeling, and environmental monitoring, leveraging High-Performance Computing infrastructures to ensure accuracy, scalability, and timeliness.

A direct discussion with our AI and HPC experts allows you to understand how to effectively integrate weather data into your decision-making processes, highlighting tangible benefits in terms of operational efficiency, strategic planning, and climate risk mitigation.

Discover the Earth pillar of IT4LIA and explore how it can help your organization turn environmental data into a competitive advantage.

Sara Soliani (Agenzia ItaliaMeteo)