How to Get Historical Weather Data for Any Location (2015-2025)
Whether you are conducting a climate risk assessment, planning a solar farm, evaluating agricultural potential, or researching environmental trends, having access to reliable historical weather data is essential. But getting this data has traditionally required either expensive subscriptions or advanced programming skills.
Key takeaway: PixelGust gives you free access to 10 years of monthly climate data (2015-2025) for any point or polygon on Earth. Just click on the map and switch to "Historical" mode.
What Historical Weather Data Is Available?
PixelGust provides monthly averages derived from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, the gold standard for global climate data produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The data covers from 2015 to 2025 at 0.25-degree resolution (roughly 28km).
| Variable | Unit | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | °C | Monthly mean, min, and max air temperature at 2m |
| Dewpoint | °C | Dewpoint temperature at 2m |
| Relative Humidity | % | Calculated from temperature and dewpoint |
| Cloud Cover | % | Total cloud coverage fraction |
| Precipitation | mm | Monthly total precipitation |
| Wind Speed | m/s | 10m wind speed (mean, min, max) |
| Solar Radiation | MJ/m² | Surface downward shortwave radiation |
| Latent Heat Flux | MJ/m² | Surface latent heat flux (evaporation proxy) |
How to Access Historical Weather Data on PixelGust
- Open the dashboard at pixelgust.com/app and click anywhere on the map, or enter specific coordinates.
- Click "Weather: Now" to open the dropdown menu, then select "Historical".
- Browse the data. You will see monthly averages with min, mean, and max values for every variable. Interactive timeseries charts let you visualize trends over the full 10-year period.
- Export. Click "Export" to download the data as an Excel spreadsheet, or "Report" to generate a PDF with charts included.
Point Data vs. Polygon Zonal Statistics
PixelGust supports two modes for historical data:
- Point mode: Click a single location and get the exact grid cell values for that coordinate.
- Polygon mode: Draw a polygon (or select an administrative region) and get zonal statistics: the min, mean, and max across all grid cells within your area of interest. This is ideal for site assessments covering large regions.
Common Use Cases
Solar Energy Site Assessment
Solar developers need historical solar radiation data to estimate energy yield. PixelGust provides 10 years of monthly solar radiation values, letting you assess the solar potential of any site without purchasing expensive datasets.
Agricultural Planning
Farmers and agronomists can use historical temperature, precipitation, and humidity data to understand growing season patterns, frost risk, and irrigation needs for any field location.
Climate Risk Assessment
Insurance companies and real estate developers use historical weather data to evaluate climate-related risks. By analyzing 10 years of temperature extremes, rainfall patterns, and wind data, you can quantify exposure to climate hazards.
Academic Research
Researchers studying climate trends, environmental change, or ecological patterns can quickly extract historical weather data for study sites without writing scripts to download and process raw NetCDF files.
API Access for Developers
If you need historical weather data programmatically, PixelGust offers a REST API. Generate an API key from the dashboard and make requests like:
GET /v1/weather?lat=40.64&lon=22.94&mode=historical
The API returns JSON data with monthly averages for all variables, making it easy to integrate into your own applications, dashboards, or analysis pipelines.
Data Sources and Methodology
The historical weather data in PixelGust comes from the ERA5 reanalysis produced by ECMWF. ERA5 combines vast amounts of observations from satellites, weather stations, radiosondes, and aircraft with numerical weather models to produce a consistent, gap-free global dataset. It is widely regarded as the most accurate global reanalysis product available.
Monthly averages are pre-computed from 6-hourly ERA5 data and stored in optimized Zarr format for fast retrieval. This allows PixelGust to deliver timeseries data in under a second for any location.