Weather Forecast Improvements at the UK Met Office: Responding to the Big Data Challenge

Vicky Pope

Input from Rich Carne, Alex Longden, Derrick Ryall

January 2017

Weather Information Value Chain

Monitor &

Observe

Model & Forecast

InterpretEconomic

ValueDecision making

Produce

© Crown copyright Met Office

Model and observations

improvements

Better use of observations

Biggest improvement in a decade

Bigger UK domain

Extend runs to 5 days

Improved forecasts of

showers

Global model

resolution increase to

10km

New UK hourly

nowcasts

Increased vertical

resolution

Couple atmosphere and ocean

Better convection

Run UK ensembles to

5 days

New radar network

Precipitation type

Doppler winds

Increased resolution

March 2016November

2016Spring 2017 2018-19Autumn 20172017

Improved showers

Monitor &

Observe

Model & Forecast

1.2

Pflo

ps

8 Pflops 16 Pflops

© Crown copyright Met Office

Content and services

• Data

• Gridded forecast data

• Spot data

• Observations

• Warnings and Guidance

• National Severe Weather Warnings

• Guidance

• Scripts

• Forecaster/Meteorologist briefings

• Verbal and web

24/7 support

Interpret

© Crown copyright Met Office

Services for the Information

Economy - INSPIRE

Discovery

View

Download

Transform

Invoke

Data downloaded as is

Catalogue

Remote compute

Reuse for interoperability

Visualisations

Produce

© Crown copyright Met Office

ProduceNew ways of working

Weather Information Value Chain

Monitor &

Observe

Model & Forecast

InterpretEconomic

ValueDecision making

Produce

WMO Interoperability

Met Service providers

© Crown copyright Met Office

Charge for

service and

content

Data: Open & free

Charge for

data

Data: Open & available

Produce

Changes

in the

information

economy

© Crown copyright Met Office

Public Weather

Service reach

Branded reach

(trusted information

provider)

Drive innovation

Service provider

arrangement

Revenue to offset cost to tax payer and

reinvest

Social and economic benefit for

UK economy

Met Office

drivers

Met Office

DWDMeteo

FNWS

Google Yahoo Amazon BA

Authoritative Warnings

Weather Forecast Services

Public

?Divergence of information

Open Weather - Purpose

• Maintaining the authoritative voice of NMSs

• Ensuring consistency between Warnings and forecast

• Supporting the global weather market

• Allowing seamless access to global weather from multiple NMS providers

Contextual Diagram

Met Office

DWDMeteo

FNWS

Other NMSs

Common Interfaces

Google Yahoo Amazon Xn...

Global AggregatorsCommercial partnersPublic facing organisations

Common service layer

Standard Data Provision

Weather Forecast Improvements at the UK Met Office: Responding to the Big Data Challenge

Vicky Pope

January 2017