MET Eireann METAR, TAF & SIGMET in IWXXM 1.0
Current JSON Original JSON

Abstract

The service provides the latest METAR, TAF, and SIGMET reports in IWXXM for Irish aerodromes in compliance with ICAO Annex 3 and PANS-MET, Document 10157. The retrieval of information will be done on a regular basis (subscription) via AMQP 1.0 whereby the message contains the whole IWXXM dataset. The other option to collect the data is via Request/Reply using OGC EDR API, where the IWXXM data is provided in replies, in a ZIP archive.

Service Type
SWIM_COMPLIANT
Life Cycle
OPERATIONAL
Business Activity Type
AERODROME_OPERATION
AIRSPACE_ORGANISATION_AND_MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION_MANAGEMENT
SERVICE_DELIVERY_MANAGEMENT
Intended Consumer
AIR_TRAFFIC_SERVICE_PROVIDER
AIRPORT_OPERATOR
AIRSIDE_GROUND_HANDLER
CIVIL_AIR_NAVIGATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER
CIVIL_AIRSPACE_USER
COMMUNICATION_NAVIGATION_AND_SURVEILLANCE_SERVICE_PROVIDER
MILITARY_AIR_NAVIGATION_SERVICE_PROVIDER
MILITARY_AIRSPACE_USER
PROVIDER_OF_DATA_SERVICES
REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Information Exchange Category
METEOROLOGICAL_INFORMATION_EXCHANGE
Application Message Exchange Pattern Entity
Request/Reply
State ICAO Nationality Letters
EI
Geospatial Categorisation Description
The dataset is valid for Ireland
Other
Service Type: METEOROLOGICAL_FEATURE_ACCESS_SERVICE
In-Operation Date
31-Dec-2025
Provider
MET Éireann

The Irish Meteorological Service

Provider Type
REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER
Point of Contact
Operational Needs

A list of operational needs that this service contributes to satisfying is available in Appendix B. This service satisfies these by offering meteorological information as regulated by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/373 of 1 March 2017 and ICAO Annex 3. The scope of the meteorological information satisfies the EU Implementing Regulation 2021/116 - Common Project One.

Information Exchange Requirements

IER 1 - The information currently included in the METAR reports as defined in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/373, ICAO Annex 3 Amdt 82 and PANS-MET.

Capabilities

The service provides high quality, up-to-date, trusted, regulated meteorological information in digital form for use by service consumers within the aviation domain.

Distribute Data

The service distributes the data according to the stored subscriptions and topics.

Request Data

The consumer is able to request the data using OGC EDR.

Subscribe to Data

The user is able to subscribe to data via AMQP by connecting to the predefined topics.

Information Retainment

Meteorological information is retained for a period of at least 30 days from the date of issue. This relates to the information itself and not the request time of the user.

Authentication

The service ensures client authentication in accordance with SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile 2.0 requirement SWIM-TIYP-0042 by implementing username and password authentication using HTTP Authorization headers with Basic scheme for HTTPS based interfaces, and using SASL PLAIN for AMQP. Users connecting to the public interfaces must present a valid EACP client certificate, which must be further whitelisted in the service based on the details of the Distinuished Name portions of the client certificate such as Common Name, Organisation, Email. The service ensures server authentication in accordance with SWIM-TIYP-0042.</p>

Authorisation

The service ensures that satisfactory authorisation is put in place according to EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile requirement SWIM-TIYP-0070.

Confidentiality

The service ensures point-to-point confidentiality in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile 2.0 through the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3. The communication is encrypted by TLS with a certificate issued by the EACP.

Integrity

The service ensures point-to-point integrity in accordance with EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure (TI) Yellow Profile through the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3.

Time Behaviour

METAR and SIGMET: Under normal operations 90% of messages will be delivered within 10 minutes after the issuing time.

Capacity

Subscriptions are managed with consideration of the capacity of the technical infrastructure. Each connection is rate and connection limited to avoid overload of the system.

Recoverability

On switchover of the hot-standby HA cluster the status of the database and queues is preserved

Integrity

Integrity is protected by using TLS layer for all the service interface bindings. However the Message Security based on S/MIME 4.0 proposed in SWIM TI Yellow Profile 2.0 is not yet implemented.

Confidentiality

Data delivery is only available for registered users, who need to present their username and password for access to the services using HTTP Authorization header with Basic scheme for HTTP based connections, and using SASL plain for AMQP connections. Users connecting to the public interfaces must present a valid EACP client certificate, which must be further whitelisted in the service based on the details of the Distinuished Name portions of the client certificate such as Common Name, Organisation, Email.

AIRM

ATM Information Reference Model

AMQP

Advanced Message Queuing Protocol

ATC

Air Traffic Control

ATM

Air Traffic Management

EACP

European Aviation Common PKI

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

ICAO

International Civil Aviation Organization

IER

Information Exchange Requirement

IR

Implementation Rules

ISRM

Information Service Reference Model

IWXXM

ICAO Meteorological Information Exchange Model

METAR

Meteorological Aerodrome Report

NWS

National Weather Service

OGC

Open Geospatial Consortium

PCP

Pilot Common Project

WMO

World Meteorological Organization

SIGMET

significant meteorological phenomena

TAF

Terminal Aerodrome Forecast

AMO

Aerodrome Meteorological Office

AMS

Aeronautical Meteorological Station

EDR

Environmental Data Retrieval

MEP

Message Exchange Pattern

PANS-MET

ICAO Procedures for Air Navigation Services - Meteorology

TIYP

Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile

TI

Technical Infrastructure

Information
Filtering Capabilities OGC EDR

The EDR implementation builds on MET3SG community MET SWIM OGC EDR GUIDANCE. Additionally it supports OGC EDR filtering machanisms: cube query using a bbox parameter, area query with a polygon specified in coords parameter, radius query.

Filtering Capabilities AMQP

Simple filtering is achieved using the topic structure of the broker, which determines the type of data recieved. AMQP SQL-like syntax for filters applied to AMQP application properties can be also used by the service consumer to further filter the data received.

The service provider ensures that the data offered within this service is created by MET Eireann, a REGULATED_METEOROLOGICAL_SERVICE_PROVIDER.
Monitoring Description

For AMQP subscriptions, regular heartbeat messages are sent to weather.aviation.metar topic at approximately 60-second intervals. Arrival of the heartbeat message indicates that the main subsystems of the service are running.

Typical Request/Reply Behaviour

The typical behavior is following:

  • Client sends request to the OGC EDR interface
  • The service replies with the appropriate HTTP response
  • If the request for specific IWXXM data is made, the service returns a zip archive with one or more files containing IWXXM messages.
Typical Data Subscription Behaviour

To subscribe to data, the consumer needs to contact the Service Provider and request the credentials. After registration, the consumer is provided the endpoints of both EDR and AMQP interfaces

OGC EDR Request Interface

Allows the service consumer to request the latest available METARs via OGC API - EDR.

PROVIDER_SIDE
Operations
EDR base endpoint

This is the connection between the service provider and the customer via EDR. You need to contact the Met Eireann aviation customer service to get the credentials for the interface.

Url

https://swim.met.ie

SWIM_TI_YP_2_0_WS_LIGHT

The WS Light Interface Binding as detailed in the EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile, edition 2.0.

EDR Request
EDR Reply
AMQP Distribution Interface

Allows the service provider to distribute the latest available METAR/SPECIs, meeting the need of the service consumer that has subscribed for updates.

PROVIDER_SIDE
Operations
Publish

The requested information is contained directly in the AMQP message

Idempotent
IDEMPOTENT
Operation Message
AMQP Message
SWIM_TI_YP_2_0_AMQP_MESSAGING

The AMQP_MESSAGING Interface Binding as detailed in the EUROCONTROL Specification for SWIM Technical Infrastructure Yellow Profile, edition 2.0

AMQP Message
References
AMQP

Advanced Message Queuing Protocol

Revision Save Date
Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:46
Schema version
v2