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New Met Office Super Computer By Simon Keeling.
Topic Started: 28 Oct 2014, 02:42 PM (24 Views)
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>> Simon's Weather Musings <<

New Met Office Super Computer
Please Sir, can we have some more? (data)

By Simon Keeling in Wombourne, Staffs 08:45hrs 28/10/2014

Today's announcement of a new £97 million pound super computer,... http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/28/met-office-forecasts-new-97m-computer-will-provide-earlier-warnings-extreme-weather ... funded by the UK government is certainly a major milestone in weather science.

But make no mistake about it, this is a government funded project and one for which every UK tax payer will be paying the price.

Let me make it clear from the very start, I am a supporter of a government funded Met Office. It has some of the best atmospheric scientists and mathematicians in the world working for it. It is a government institution we should be proud of. So this is not a Met Office bashing musing.

That said, lets crack on.

In the great scheme of things, a £97 million pound investment in a computer which will see several years of working life is a drop in the ocean of government funding. But it is funding for which only the Met Office (\"We are a Trading Fund within the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, operating on a commercial basis under set targets.\") could apply. I know of no private sector weather company that has the facilities, inclination or business plan to apply for such funding.

And so this public investment places a huge responsibility on the Met Office.

It is important to note the politics at play here. For many years the government has made no secret of the fact that the Met Office is on it's target list for possible privatisation.

I have always been doubtful of this because the Met Office revenues do not support privatisation. Despite glossy annual reports and accounts brochures (2013/2014 are available here), total revenues are still only £208.1m, showing an operating profit of £11.2m (down £1.1m on 2012/2013).

Factor in the £175.4m of this revenue was direct government funding, and at the very best you have a commercial turnover of £32.7m.

Major contracts within this commercial turnover include the BBC weather service and the service provided to civil aviation in the UK. I cannot locate any revenue figures for these contracts, but back-of-a-fag-packet calculations soon put these numbers into the millions.

All in-all, this doesn't make the Met Office too much of an attractive investment to those wishing to make a quick buck. Of course, other private avenues are available, for example a management buyout (the total renumeration of some of the civil servants who run the Met Office are on page 27 of the report).

I maintain that the Met Office should be the centre of excellence of meteorological research and science in the UK, and the investment of £97m by the government should be both expected and welcomed.

The Met Office should be the sole source of official severe weather warnings in the UK, and should provide the most basic of national and regional forecasts in order to keep the public informed of basic weather information.

But this is where the private sector should now be allowed to pay its' part.

Given that the Met Office can only generate such small amounts in commercial revenues, they should be encouraging the UK private sector to get involved and play it's part in returning money back into the exchequer through employee tax returns and corporation tax from profits.

At the present time, the only available access to the current high resolution met Office model (the EURO4) is through Weatheronline.co.uk. This is a private company spending a lot of money each year to purchase EURO4 model data from the UK Met Office.

By contrast, the USA national weather service, NOAA, allow free access to all data output from the GFS model (familiar to those using Weatherweb.net and other internet sites).

This free access enables private weather companies (a flourishing sector in the USA for many years) to develop products that customers need, and in many cases are willing to pay for.

This in turn returns revenue back into the US government coffers, which ultimately can lead to more investment in further upgrades to the US national weather service super computer.

If UK weather companies were given access to the data from the new Met Office super computer on the same basis, we too could develop innovative products, employ more people, and return more revenue to the exchequer (provided such returns are not allowed to be syphoned through any elaborate dilution schemes).

The public would also have access to the raw data from the computer, but it would be up to private companies to satisfy the market need for enhanced weather information.

Ultimately, it is my belief, that the Met Office should remove itself entirely from commercial activities, and leave these to private companies. That way such companies could fly the flag for Met Office standards, proudly boating the use of Met Office data and positively enhancing the UK-brand both within this country and abroad.

So come on Met Office, give us access to the data, and we will give you the accolades and returns you deserve!

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Link ..................... http://www.weatherweb.net/
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