Users of the WIS Portal agree to abide by the following terms of use in addition to the content of the general legal notice of the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA):
Service Level
- This portal site is part of WIS Part B, which is operated on a best-effort basis. Users with operationally critical purposes of usage are advised to use WIS Part A, also known as GTS.
- Service may be changed, suspended, or interrupted for various reasons including (but not limited to) improvement, WMO standardization, and/or resource limitations.
Data Policy
- Most of the data available via the WIS Portal are subject to the WMO Data Policy set in Resolution 40 of the Twelfth World Meteorological Congress (Res 40), which prescribes essential and additional data categories.
- Currently, essential data are made publicly available. However, JMA reserves the right to change the access policy at its discretion as deemed necessary to better serve all WMO and related international programmes. Commercial users are advised to contact the Japan Meteorological Business Support Center or national meteorological services in their own country.
- Access to additional data requires registration. Such data should not be exported for commercial purposes in line with Resolution 40. A list of additional data is maintained on the WMO website.
- The products listed below, which are not covered by Resolution 40, also require registration. The information they contain/provide should not be re-distributed to any third party:
- Information for aviation meteorology under the control of ICAO, including METAR, SPECI, TAF and SIGMET
- JMA forecast products provided under the framework of High-resolution GSM Data Service (Note: low-resolution products are open to the public and free of this restriction.)
- Observational data in SATAID format (see SATAID Service for details)
- External sites linked to from the WIS Portal, including those to information on JMA's DCPC operations, may have different data policies. For example, some centres have no access control but include a usage condition that requests citation for academic publication.