The Met Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an
executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills and a member of the Public Data Group. The chief executive is Rob Varley
and the chief scientist is Dame Julia Slingo. The Met Office makes
meteorological predictions across all timescales from weather forecasts to
climate change. The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and the
National Meteorological Library and Archive are part of the Met Office. At
the Met Office headquarters at Exeter in Devon is the Met Office College, which
handles the training for internal personnel and forecasters from around
the world. History
The Met Office was established in 1854 as a small department within the Board
of Trade under Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy as a service to mariners. The
loss of the passenger vessel, the Royal Charter, and 459 lives off the coast of
Anglesey in a violent storm in October 1859 led to the first gale warning
service. In 1861 FitzRoy had established a network of 15 coastal stations from
which visual gale warnings could be provided for ships at sea.
The development of the electric telegraph in the 1870s led to the more
rapid dissemination of warnings and also led to the development of an
observational network which could then be used to provide synoptic analysis.
In 1861, the Met Office started providing weather forecasts to
newspapers. Publication of forecasts ceased in May 1866 and recommenced in
April 1879. = Connection with the Ministry of
Defence = Following the First World War, the Met
Office became part of the Air Ministry in 1919, the weather observed from the
top of Adastral House giving rise to the phrase "The weather on the Air Ministry
roof". As a result of the need for weather information for aviation, the
Met Office located many of its observation and data collection points
on RAF airfields, and this accounts for the large number of military airfields
mentioned in weather reports even today. In 1936 the Met Office split with
services to the Royal Navy being provided by its own forecasting
services. It became an executive agency of the
Ministry of Defence in April 1990, a quasi-governmental role, being required
to act commercially. Following a machinery of government change, the Met
Office became part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 18
July 2011. A branch of the Met Office known as the
Mobile Met Unit accompany forward units in times of conflict advising the armed
forces of the conditions for battle, particularly the RAF.
Locations In September 2003 the Met Office moved
its headquarters to a purpose-built £80m structure near Exeter Airport and the
A30, in Devon, being officially opened on 21 June 2004 – a few weeks short of
its 150th anniversary – by Robert May, Baron May of Oxford, from its previous
location of Bracknell in Berkshire. It has a worldwide presence – including a
forecasting centre in Aberdeen, and offices in Gibraltar and on the
Falklands. Other outposts lodge in establishments such as the Joint Centre
for Mesoscale Meteorology at University of Reading in Berkshire, the Joint
Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Research site at Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and
there is a Met Office presence at Army and Air Force bases within the UK and
abroad. Royal Navy weather forecasts are generally provided by naval officers,
not Met Office personnel. Forecasts
= Shipping forecast = The shipping forecast is produced by the
Met Office and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, for those traversing the seas around the
British Isles. = Weather forecasting and warnings =
The Met Office issues Severe Weather Warnings for the United Kingdom through
the National Severe Weather Warning Service. These warn of weather events
that may affect transport infrastructure and endanger people's lives. In March
2008, the system was improved and a new stage of warning was introduced, the
'Advisory'. = Weather prediction models =
The main role of the Met Office is to produce forecast models by gathering
information from weather satellites in space and observations on earth, then
processing it using two IBM supercomputers with a variety of models,
based on a software package known as the unified model. The principal weather
products for UK customers are 36-hour forecasts from the operational 1.5 km
resolution UKV model covering the UK and surroundings, 48-hour forecasts from the
12 km resolution NAE model covering Europe and the North Atlantic, and
144-hour forecasts from the 25 km resolution global model. The Met
Office's Global Model forecast has consistently been in the top 3 for
global weather forecast performance in independent verification to WMO
standards. Products for other regions of the globe are sold to customers abroad,
provided for MOD operations abroad or provided free to developing countries in
Africa. If necessary, forecasters may make adjustments to the computer
forecasts. Data is stored in the Met Office's own PP-format.
= Flood Forecasting Centre = Formed in 2009, the Flood Forecasting
Centre is a joint venture between the Environment Agency and the Met Office to
provide flood risk guidance for England and Wales. The Centre is jointly staffed
from both parent organisations and is based in the Operations Centre at the
Met Office headquarters in Exeter. In Scotland this role is performed by the
Scottish Flood Forecasting Service, a joint venture between the Scottish
Environment Protection Agency and the Met Office.
= Seasonal forecasts = The Met Office makes seasonal forecasts
and distributes them to customers and users globally. The Met Office was the
first climate and weather forecast provider to be recognised as a Global
Producing Centre of long range forecasts by the World Meteorological Organisation
and continues to provide forecasts to the WMO for dissemination to other
national meteorological services worldwide.
Met Office research has broken new ground in seasonal forecasting for the
extratropics and has demonstrated its abilities in its "seasonal predictions
of the North Atlantic Oscillation". and winter climate for Europe and North
America. Current "long range forecast
information". can be found on the Met Office web site.
= Supply of forecasts for broadcasting companies =
In particular, two of the main media companies, the BBC and ITV produce
forecasts using the Met Office's data. At the BBC Weather Centre, they are
continuously updated on the information arriving by computer, or by fax and
e-mail. The BBC's new graphics are used on all of their television weather
broadcasts, but ITV Weather use animated weather symbols. The forecasters at the
BBC Weather Centre are employed by the Met Office, not the BBC. On 23 August
2015 is was announced that the BBC would be replacing the Met Office with a
competing provider, as part of the corporation's legal obligation to
provide best value for money for the licence fee payers.
= World Area Forecast Centre = The Met Office is one of only two World
Area Forecast Centres or WAFCs, and is referred to as WAFC London. The other
WAFC is located in Kansas, USA and known as WAFC Washington. WAFC data is used
daily to safely and economically route aircraft, particularly on long-haul
journeys. The data provides details of wind speed and direction, air
temperature, cloud type and tops, and other features.
= Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre = As part of its aviation forecast
operation the Met Office operates the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre.
This provides forecasts to the aviation industry of volcanic ash clouds that
could enter aircraft flight paths and impact aviation safety. The London VAAC,
one of nine worldwide, is responsible for the area covering the British Isles,
the north east Atlantic and Iceland. The VAAC were set up by the International
Civil Aviation Organisation, an agency of the United Nations, as part of the
International Airways Volcano Watch. The London VAAC makes use of satellite
images, plus seismic, radar and visual observation data from Iceland, the
location of all of the active volcanoes in its area of responsibility. The NAME
dispersion model developed by the Met Office is used to forecast the movement
of the ash clouds 6, 12 and 18 hours from the time of the alert at different
flight levels. = Air quality =
The Met Office issues air quality forecasts made using NAME, the Met
Office's medium-to-long-range atmospheric dispersion model. It was
developed as a nuclear accident model following the Chernobyl accident in
1986, but has since evolved into an all-purpose dispersion model capable of
predicting the transport, transformation and deposition of a wide class of
airborne materials. NAME is used operationally by the Met Office as an
emergency response model as well as for routine air quality forecasting. Aerosol
dispersion is calculated using the UKCA model.
The forecast is produced for pollutants and their typical health effects are
shown in the following table. = IPCC =
Until 2001 the Met Office hosted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change working group, chaired by John Houghton, on climate science. In 2001
the working group moved to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
= High performance computing = Due to the large amount of computation
needed for Numerical Weather Prediction and the Unified model, the Met Office
has had some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. In November
1997 the Met Office supercomputer was ranked third in the world.
= Customer service = In 2012 the Met Office Contact Centre
was accepted on to the Top 50 Call Centres For Customer Service programme.
After a period of mystery shopping and analysis the Weather Desk was awarded
Top 50 status. Weather stations
Reports from weather stations can be automatic, semi-automatic, or manual.
Some stations produce manual observations during business hours and
revert to automatic observations outside these times. Many stations feature
"present weather" sensors, CCTV, etc. There is also a network of 'upper air'
stations, using Radiosondes. Some stations have limited reporting
times, while other report continuously, mainly RAF and Army Air Corps stations
where a manned met office is provided for military operations. The "standard"
is a once-hourly reporting schedule, but automatic stations can often be "polled"
as required, while stations at airfields report twice-hourly, with additional
special reports as necessary to inform airfield authorities of changes to the
weather that may affect aviation operations.
Some stations report only CLIMAT data and these are usually recorded at 0900
and 2100 hours daily. Weather reports are often performed by observers not
specifically employed by the Met Office, such as Air traffic control staff,
coastguards, university staff and so on. Meteorological Research Unit & the
Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements
Meteorological Research was carried out at RAE Bedford with instruments being
carried by barrage balloons until the RAE facility closed in the 1980s.
The Met Office association with Cardington continues by maintaining a
Meteorological Research Unit, this is responsible for conducting research into
part of the atmosphere called the boundary layer by using a tethered
balloon which is kept in a small portable hangar.
= FAAM = The Facility for Airborne Atmospheric
Measurements, part of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, is based
at Cranfield Airport. It is a collaboration with the Natural
Environment Research Council. The FAAM was established as part of the
National Centre for Atmospheric Science, itself part of NERC, to provide aircraft
measurement for use by UK atmospheric research organisations on worldwide
campaigns. The main equipment is a modified BAe 146 type 301 aircraft,
registration G-LUXE, owned and operated by BAE Systems on behalf of Directflight
Limited. Areas of application include:
Radiative transfer studies in clear and cloudy air;
Tropospheric chemistry measurements; Cloud physics and dynamic studies;
Dynamics of mesoscale weather systems; Boundary layer and turbulence studies;
Remote sensing: verification of ground based instruments;
Satellite ground truth: radiometric measurements and winds;
Satellite instrument test-bed; Campaigns in the UK and abroad.
Directors General and Chief Executives Sir William Napier Shaw 1905–1920
Sir Graham Sutton 1954–1965 Basil John Mason 1965–1983
Sir John Houghton 1983–1991 Julian Hunt 1992–1997
Peter Ewins 1997–2004 David Rogers 2004–2005
Mark Hutchinson 2005–2007 John Hirst 2007-2014
Rob Varley 2014- See also
Climatic Research Unit hacking incident Climate of the United Kingdom
Climate change in the United Kingdom Burns' Day storm
Eskdalemuir Observatory European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts Great Storm of 1987
Met Éireann, the Irish meteorological service, which separated from the UK Met
Office in 1936. North West Shelf Operational
Oceanographic System References
Further reading Hunt, Roger, "The end of weather
forecasting at Met Office London", Weather magazine, Royal Meteorological
Society, June 2007, v.62, no.6, pp. 143–146
Walker, Malcolm, History of the Meteorological Office Cambridge
University Press ISBN 978-0-521-85985-1 External links
Official website BBC Weather Centre
BBC Shipping Forecast page Met Office Archive
Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology at the University of Reading
Joint Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Research
The Met office on www.top500.org Met Office on Twitter
Met Office news blog Met Office's channel on YouTube