science

Meteocentre

Meteocentre is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Meteocentre rather than just read about it. In short: Meteocentre (also named UQAM Weather Centre) is a website displaying real-time weather information for North America and Europe organized in three different portals, each adapted for a given area and named after a town part of the region of interest: 1) Montréal, for Québec, 2) Toulouse, for France and 3) Reading, for the United Kingdom. The website created in 1994 is maintained by its founder Christian Pagé, actual…

Key takeaways

Meteocentre belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Meteocentre to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Meteocentre from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Meteocentre (also named UQAM Weather Centre) is a website displaying real-time weather information for North America and Europe organized in three different portals, each adapted for a given area and named after a town part of the region of interest: 1) Montréal, for Québec, 2) Toulouse, for France and 3) Reading, for the United Kingdom. The website created in 1994 is maintained by its founder Christian Pagé, actually a research engineer at CERFACS, in collaboration since 2009 with Jean-François Caron, a research scientist at the Met Office, and hosted by the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Its Quebec portal, the UQAM-Montreal Weather Centre, is deemed as being the most complete weather data website for Montreal and Quebec.

History Meteocentre started in 1994 as an HTML page gathering the best links to online weather info for Montreal. At the time, this page created by Christian Pagé was only locally available on one of UQAM's server. In July 1995, the site was launched in the public domain, initially under the name 'Atmospheric Sciences' and adopted later the name "Montreal Weather Centre". Until 1999, the site was mainly a collection of external links. Thanks to Christian Pagé initiative, UQAM subscribed in 1999 to the Unidata program, a US program broadcasting real-time weather data to the academic community. Many weather products specific to Meteocentre will then be developed in the coming years: hourly surface observations and analyses, numerical weather prediction charts, satellite imagery, lightning maps, etc. In October 2000, the site adopted its current web address: meteocentre.com. Following Christian Pagé stay at Météo-France in 2001, a new portal devoted to French weather was created and whether products were extended to Europe. News maps from the Canadian numerical weather prediction model were also made available thanks to a privilege access of UQAM to Environment Canada's weather data. Also in 2001, discussion forums for Quebec and France were launched and MeteoAlerte Quebec, a collaborative website inspired by the former French Oragenet project, was launched. In July 2002, MeteoAlerte was extended to France and grown rapidly thanks to a fruitful partnership with Infoclimat. In the same year, Meteocentre adopted its current name: 'UQAM Weather Centre'. In 2009, a legal agreement was signed between Météo-France, MeteoAlerte and Infoclimat to share MeteoAlerte weather reports with Météo-France. During the same year, a United Kingdom portal was launched following the growing involvement of Jean-François Caron, a former university colleague of Christian Pagé. This new collaboration allowed to add many new products from numerical weather prediction models and to extend the reach of MeteoAlerte in Europe.

Honor In 2009, Christian Pagé was awarded the Alcide-Ouellet prize by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society for his contribution to broadcasting weather information on the internet.

Notes and references

External links (in English) UQAM-Montréal Weather Centre (in French) MétéoAlerte

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Meteocentre

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Meteocentre claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Meteocentre before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Meteocentre ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Meteocentre

In research: Meteocentre appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Meteocentre in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Meteocentre is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Meteorological research institutes, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Meteocentre outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Meteocentre in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Meteocentre means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Meteocentre out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Meteocentre in simple terms?

Why does Meteocentre matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Meteocentre?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Meteocentre.