The ceilometer CL51 employs a pulsed diode laser LIDAR technology, where short, powerful laser pulses are sent out in a vertical or near-vertical direction. The reflection of light (backscatter) caused by clouds, precipitation or other obscuration is analysed and used to determine the cloud base height, the cloud layer height and the amount of clouds (in octas) in different layers.

The climatological network contains about 200 stations spread over the whole country. It consists of voluntary observers recruited by the RMI, professional observers of Skeyes (civil aviation) or the Air Force (military aviation) and civil servants of the state, communities or private companies. The observers measure the amount of rain fallen in the last 24 hours in the pluviometer of the RMI every morning at 8 o‘clock. In more than half of the stations the extreme air temperatures are also recorded by reading the maximum and minimum temperature in a standardized weather shelter. The observers send their observations either on a  daily or on a monthly basis to RMI. This product is not publicly available yet.

View Service (WMS) for Alaro over Belgium. All the parameters of the last run of Alaro can be visualized, most of them associated with a custom style.

Daily forecasts for each Belgian commune, from current day up to the next 14 days. Available parameters are : min temperature, max temperature, weather type, wind speed, wind direction, maximum hust speed, quantity of precipitation. This product is not publicly available.

Download Service (WCS) for Alaro over Belgium. All the parameters of the last run of Alaro can be downloaded in grid format

Bird density profiles are derived from weather radar volume data in real time, by the vol2bird algorithm as described in Dokter et al. (2011, 2019). The vol2bird algorithm exploits the radar reflectivity characteristics of different scatterers in the atmosphere, in order to distinguish biological from non-biological radar echoes. Once biological scatterers are isolated in the volume files, the reflectivity of these scatterers is converted in an estimate of the bird density per vertical layer of 200m, using a mean cross section of 11 cm2. The vbird profiles are provided for the following radars, with the radar owner in parentheses: Jabbeke (RMI), Wideumont (RMI), Helchteren (VMM), Zaventem (Skeyes), Herwijnen (KNMI), Den Helder (KNMI), Neuheilenbach (DWD), Essen (DWD), Abbeville (Météo-France) and Avesnois (Météo-France). References: - Dokter A.M., Liechti F., Stark H., Delobbe L., Tabary P., Holleman I., Bird migration flight altitudes studied by a network of operational weather radars, J. R. Soc. Interface, 8, 30–43, 2011, DOI 10.1098/rsif.2010.0116 - Dokter A.M., Desmet P., Spaaks J.H., van Hoey S., Veen L., Verlinden L., Nilsson C., Haase G., Leijnse H., Farnsworth A., Bouten W., Shamoun-Baranes J., bioRad: biological analysis and visualization of weather radar data, Ecography, 42, 852-860, 2019, DOI 10.1111/ecog.04028

RMI operates a network of 17 automatic weather stations in Belgium. These weather stations report meteorological paramaters such as air pressure, temperature, relative humidity, precipitation (quantity,duration), wind (speed, gust, direction), sunshine duration, shortwave solar radiation and infrared radiation every 10 minutes. Daily AWS data are computed from the 10-min observations.

The SYNOP data of RMI contain the observations of the synoptic network, currently consisting of 29 stations, 13 of which are owned by RMI. The other stations belong to MeteoWing (8 stations), Skeyes (7 stations). There is also 1 foreign station. All SYNOP data is given in Universal Time! (local time winter = UT +1; local time summer = UT + 2) Parameters: 1. Precipitation: PRECIP_QUANTITY + PRECIP_RANGE 2. Temperature: TEMP + TEMP_MIN + TEMP_MAX + TEMP_GRASS_MIN 3. Wind: WIND_SPEED + WIND_SPEED_UNIT + WIND_DIRECTION + WIND_PEAK_SPEED 4. relative humidity: HUMIDITY_RELATIVE 5. weather type: WEATHER_CURRENT 6. air pressure: PRESSURE of PRESSURE_STATION_LEVEL 7. sunshine duration: SUN_DURATION_24H 8. Global radiation: SHORT_WAVE_FROM_SKY_24HOUR 9. Total cloudiness: CLOUDINESS

Hail products are derived from the observed vertical profiles of radar reflectivity and the NWP vertical profiles of temperature. Three types of products are generated. poh : probability of hail of any size (larger than 0.5 cm diameter)expressed in %. posh : probability of severe hail(larger than 2cm)expressed in %. mesh : maximum expected size of hailexpressed in mm of hailstone diameter. All products are generated every 5 minutes. This product is not publically available yet.