IMGW-PIB data - how to download and use it in water monitoring
Many of your own measurements only make sense in the context of weather and hydrology - and in Poland this data is publicly available, free of charge, thanks to IMGW-PIB (the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management - National Research Institute). It is worth knowing what you will find there and how to use it.
What IMGW-PIB provides
- Meteorological data - including air temperature, rainfall, wind, pressure, humidity.
- Hydrological data - including water levels and flows at gauging stations.
- Warnings and information on the hydrological-meteorological situation.
How to download it
- The IMGW public-data portal makes data available for download (current and archival) in formats for further use.
- A public API is also available, which lets you download data programmatically (e.g. current measurements from a station) - convenient when you want to pull it in automatically and regularly.
(The specific addresses and scope change over time - it is best to start from the IMGW public-data page.)
What to use it for
IMGW data is ready-made context for your measurements:
- rainfall explains changes in water level and turbidity (run-off after rain),
- temperature helps you understand fluctuations in oxygen, the risk of cyanobacterial blooms, and even bark-beetle swarming,
- levels and flows upstream help interpret what is happening at your point.
In practice
Manually downloading and stitching this data together with your own measurements can be tedious. If you do not want to do it by hand, LimnoLog has connectors that can automatically pull in data from public APIs (including IMGW-PIB) and record it alongside your measurements, on a shared time axis. More on combining data - in the article How to combine your own measurements with public data.
← Knowledge base