WX question What info is on a TAF that is not on a Metar?Whats the different?

Answer 1

METAR is the hourly weather. It's the conditions at that time or, if the weather changes, rapidly, at the time listed in the report ( usually reported as COR for Corrected or SPECI for special report)

TAF is a forecast of condtions for a certain time period, not longer then 24 hours

Answer 2

In meteorology and aviation, TAF is a format for reporting weather forecast information, particularly as it relates to aviation. "TAF" is an acronym of Terminal Aerodrome Forecast or, in some countries, Terminal Area Forecast. Generally a 24-hour forecast, it complements and uses similar encoding to METAR reports.

TAFs are always produced by a human forecaster based on the ground. For this reason there are far fewer TAF locations than there are METARs. TAFs are much more accurate than Numerical Weather Forecasts, since they take into account local, small-scale, geographic effects.


METAR is a format for reporting weather information. METAR means "aviation routine weather report" and is predominantly used by pilots in fullfilment of a part of a pre-flight weather briefing.

It is also used by meteorologists, who use aggregated METAR information to help forecast the weather. METAR reports usually come from airports. Typically, reports are generated once an hour; however, if conditions change significantly, they may be updated in special reports called SPECI's. And they generally encoded by automated sites located at airports and military bases. Some locations still use Augmented observations, which are recorded by digital sensors and encoded via software, but are watch by certified weather observers or forecasters prior to being transmitted. Even more rare actual observations taken by trained observers or forecasters actually observing and manually encoding observations prior to being transmitted. A typical METAR report contains data for the temperature, dew point, wind, precipitation, cloud cover, cloud heights, visibility, and barometric pressure. A METAR report may also contain information on precipitation amounts, lightning, and other information that would be of interest to pilots or meteorologists such as Colour States.

In addition, a short period forecast called a TREND may be added at the end of the METAR covering likely changes in weather conditions in the two hours following the observation. These are in the same format as a TAF.

Answer 3

you dont get the QNH or the temperature on a taf, obviously cos it's a forecast.