UV index is now a part of One Call API
Posted on 08 Mar 2021
The granularity of the UV index has been increased and it is now included into the One Call API. In case you are using the preceding API for UV index, we would encourage you to switch to the enhanced solution.
The sunlight has an ambiguous effect on the human body. While supplying us with the vitamin D, responsible for bone health and proper functioning of neuromuscular and immune systems, an excessive exposure to ultraviolet rays can cause harm depending on your skin type. Whenever the UV index reaches 3 or above, a protection for skin and eyes is recommended.
In the UK, January, February, November and December are months with an average maximum UV index of 2. Which makes it a safe time to be out, if only the weather would be tempting. On the other side of the world, in Australia, the UV index in the same months can reach up to 11 units, making it another excuse to stay at home, since the ozone layer depletion and high solar radiation made the skin cancer incidence rates in Australia highest in the world. Among other harms that the ultraviolet may cause is the premature aging of skin and detrimental effect on the eyesight.
UV index for current, hourly and daily forecasts
At OpenWeather we constantly improve our products and recently some improvements were made for UV index. Previously, the UV index was available through the separate API and provided the UV index for 12:00pm of any date starting with 22/06/2017. The new UV indexes are available through One Call API for any subscription plan, starting with freemium. The functionality of One Call API enables you to obtain the UV index measures for any location in 3 types such as current UV index, hourly UV index for the upcoming 2 days and the maximum daily value of UV index for the upcoming 7 days.
The Ultraviolet Index API has been deprecated due to a low data granularity and will no longer be supported after the 1st of April, 2021. However, those who are currently using this API and not willing to switch to the newer version, will still be able to access the deprecated product.
UV index in One Call API
One Call API returns current UV index as well as forecasted UV index for 48 hours and 7 days in a single API response and the corresponding fields look as follows:
current.uvi - Current UV index; hourly.uvi - UV index for the specific hour; daily.uvi - The maximum value of UV index for the day.
Whenever you make a call for the historical weather data available through our One Call API, look for the following field to get the UV index for the noon of the specified day:
current.uvi - Midday UV index.
Get all the weather measurements via One Call API
One Call API brings together the essential meteorological data to deliver a whole range of forecasts for: current weather; weather history for 5 days; weather forecast for 7 days; minutely forecast for 1 hour and hourly forecast for 2 days. Last year, we enriched it with the national weather alerts service and now it gets the UV index. All the data is available in one piece for all tariff plans, starting with a freemium subscription.
The data for UV index is taken from the classical NOAA, Met Office and Environment Canada forecasting models. We enrich these models with complementary data from various sources and proprietary algorithms, improving the overall quality and reliability of data. You can learn more about the technology we use on this page.
There is another OpenWeather product that is tightly linked to environmental issues - Air Pollution API, which is also included into all our tariff plans and you may read about it in our blog.
