By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff reporter
The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) drastically cut the fees it charges for using its weather data, Sunday.
Now, academic meteorologists can use KMA data, such as surface and aerospace observations, satellite and radar data, and numerical models at a rationalized rate of around 2 million won ($1,670) per year, a sharp drop from a possible maximum of 240 billion won per year under the previous system.
The fee for using the KMA’s weather data was 200 won per kilobyte, but this drew criticism for being too expensive.
For example, it cost around 20 million won for downloading 100 megabytes of data and 240 billion won for 1.2-terabytes of yearly data.
Due to the extremely high, unrealistic fees, scholars were forced to give up using weather data. The KMA altered its system to charge some 300,000 won per gigabyte.
“We reduced the fees so researchers can use the data created with taxpayers money,” a KMA official said. “We expect a more diverse use of meteorological data.”