Wikivoyage:Climate Expedition

The Climate Expedition page is for bringing together our efforts to present concise traveler oriented climate and weather info.

Rationale. Travelers want to know basic climate info about the places they are going. It helps them travel light by bringing only the things they need, and travel comfortably by bringing the right things. Wikivoyage lacks clear guidelines about how to write this info well. This expedition is designed to develop those guidelines.

Goals

Be traveler focused—provide only information travelers need. Traveler focused climate and weather info need not take up much space. Just the concise relevant facts, read at a glance, are all travelers need. Further details belong on climate and weather sites.
Bring together our efforts to write traveler focused climate info.
Learn what the legal limits are so we don't overstep them. Facts are not subject to copyright. So we have some legal footing for using some data (facts) from copyrighted sources.
Write Wikivoyage's guidelines on writing climate info, once we figure enough of this out.

Show

How to write helpful climate info, well and concisely. Once it matures, add this to Wikivoyage's guidelines.

Example pages

Chicago#Climate shows a prototype forecast box (via template)
Cincinnati#Climate shows an averages monthly climate data table (via slightly complex template)
Wuhan shows Template:Climate with a short description of the climate at the bottom of the info box (inserted via optional parameter 'description')
Palo Alto shows Template:Climate with Template:ForecastNOAA nested into its 'description' parameter
Ko Chang(permanent link because I'm going to change it to use the template now) and Antalya(also permalink) show simple table wiki markup used instead of a template. Nice, too. Are templates better? I think templates are better because they put computers to work updating every instance of themselves as we improve the layout and this helps keeps Wikivoyage's look and feel consistent. But simple is tables work, too. --(WT-en) Rogerhc 02:51, 3 June 2007 (EDT)

Templates (polished)

Climate templates, working well and ready to use:

Template:Climate - can use Imperial or Metric units of measure depending what you set its 'units' parameter to. It also has a text box at the bottom for descriptive text about climate and or links to forecast sites (such as via a nested Template:ForecastNOAA). This is a refactored and modified version of Template:ClimateCelsius. Please comment on the talk page which also shows what it looks like. Thanks! :-)
Template:Forecast/US - Only to be used for U.S. destinations. The template links to a National Weather Service forecast for the destination in questions. The template's successful use is dependent on three values: the name of the place; the latitude (in decimal) form; and the longitude (in decimal form). Because linking to a NWS site on a printed version of Wikivoyage is pretty fruitless, when someone clicks on the "Printable version" link (in the "toolbox" section) the template will not be displayed.
Template:Forecast/AU - similar to Template:Forecast/US but only for Australian and Antarctic destinations.
Template:ForecastNOAA - Only for US locations. Provides an in-line text link to NOAA 7 day forecast. Similar to, and inspired by Sapphire's work in, Template:Forecast/US. An example of this template nested within the 'description' parameter of Template:Climate is in Palo Alto page.

Templates (dev)

Parser functions are used on this expedition; help understanding them is at mediawiki.org and meta

Tables in wiki markup and how to add styling is explained at mediawiki.org

Development

Template:Climate/sandbox1 - status: it WORKS. "units" parameter set to either "Metric" or "Imperial" and optional "description" parameter set to some text to describe the location's climate in prose that can also include a link to local 7 day forecast via a nested Template:ForecastNOAA or plain URL link. This is a development version for experimentation of Template:Climate.

Climate data sources

Public domain

National Park Service — The National Park Service (NPS) provides detailed descriptions of the climates for many U.S. National Parks and Monuments. Simply click on the national park in question, then click on the "Plan your visit" page. Typically, there will be a "Things To Know Before You Come" link, click on it. Now, on the Things To Know Before You Come page click on the "Weather" link, if there is one. Not all parks/monuments provide this information, but a lot do. See the weather page for Glacier National Park . Typically descriptions can be copied verbatim, however, some copyediting may be required.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — NOAA collects all kinds of useful data, but NOAA's scope is essentially limited to U.S. locales, however, you can find information for non-US places that have a strategic partnership with NOAA. NOAA has amazingly useful data tables which will allow you to search for averages for particular cities throughout the U.S., specifically Normal Daily Maximum Temperature, Degrees F and Normal Daily Minimum Temperature, Degrees F.

Copyrighted

Weatherbase, worldwide climate data, searchable by city, nicely presented.
World Climate, worldwide climate data, searchable by city.

Legal

Facts are not copyrightable. So we have some legal footing for using some data (facts) from copyrighted sources. Let's learn what the legal limits are so we don't overstep them however.

Tools

Importing from Wikipedia

If Wikipedia has a climate table, wikitext for Wikivoyage can be generated using the someday tool (also hosted on wmflabs by entering the Wikipedia page title in the URL (which may or may not be the same as the Wikivoyage article). The result can be copied directly into the Wikivoyage article (example).