met office lose bbc contract.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

bbc article

apparently they will still use the met office weather warnings but not forecasts. Its a bit mad really, the met office is bound to be expensive, it runs its own models on huge supercomputers. Whilst the info conveyed by the bbc isnt always the best, the met office are one of the best forecasters in the world.
Really hope it doesnt affect the shipping forecast!

If it's all down to costs, I guess it'll be the Stick-A-Wet-Finger-In-The-Air Office that'll have won the BBC contract?

That is interesting, thank you - DH works in meteorology and so I expect to hear all about this when I get up

I expect so :(
perhaps I should tender

I'm torn on this. I work for a public body closely allied with the Met Office and reliant on their forecasting. If the BBC procurement rules are anything like ours, they will have had to put the weather forecast contract out to tender (public contracts above around 200k-500k Euros, depending what they are, have to be advertised in Europe by law) and appraised it on a cost:quality model. Whilst I genuinely believe that the Met Office provide a high quality service, IME of public tender appraisals, there comes a point where excellent quality just does not outweigh high cost.

Having said all that I strongly believe in public bodies supporting each other. I am currently helping some Local Authorities with work they are required to do by law, but do not have the skills or resources to do so; equality we now share our building with around 6 other public bodies. However, the costs involved in those examples are a fraction of those involved in the BBC weather contract. I imagine the bbc's hands were somewhat tied by European public procurement law.

DH has volunteered the thought that the Met Office is indeed high quality but they charge a ludicrous amount for access to their weather data, while American weather data is free (and good quality apparently). He suggests that many companies in the UK utilise Met data because that's what the BBC does, and so this move by the BBC may trigger a shift towards the American data (or other sources) by other companies too.

He's also pointed out that while for many companies it's difficult or impossible to change data providers because of the way the data is formatted, we don't have that problem with weather data because it is all the same sort of format. It is entirely possible to just switch data supplier in this field apparently, so I imagine that's what the BBC are looking to do.

Do you think it will prompt the Met Office to rethink their pricing? It's obviously not ideal if you've alienated your most prestigious client.

Hmm. I don't know about their being the best in the world...I don't know of anyone better, but they very often seem to get it completely wrong here.

Is there anyone better? I mean I look at the MET site when I want to know as the others are an unknown quantity to me but I never kind of place my trust in it.

Interesting info, Bike and Contessa . My reaction was purely knee-jerk; my affection for BBC, Met Office and other long established public bodies overcame me. Of course if a new supplier can provide data that is as good as (or better than) the incumbent at a better price then that's the way to go.

As BadKitten says, though, they'd better not start tampering with the shipping forecast!

Hasn't the met office faced criticism over its stance on climate change in the last few years?

There's a POV that the met office has a vested interest in exaggerating the climate change figures it produces in order to keep on attracting its high levels of government funding. I believe the climate change deniers are very wrong but could the BBC be wanting to distance itself from this criticism by not choosing the met office?

where would the new provider get their data from? There are plenty of weather models out there but for small scale synoptics I don't know who else runs specific Uk ensembles.

I think as Bike says, this is down to European law forcing them to go to tender. With the cost cutting climate they may have been forced to choose cost over quality.

I'm no expert, but LaContessa says below that America weather data for the UK is pretty good too. Sorry if I have misunderstood.

so it's pointless looking at bbc weather now?

on a larger scale I think, but weather models run at different resolutions. Imagine drawing a grid across the uk. The smaller the squares are in the grid, the smaller the features you can model, so you can resolve small weather synoptics better. I dont know of any us model that runs at high resolution across us. In UK weather its those little aspects that make a huge difference.
Others may know the US models better :)

the change will take place next year :)

Do you think the US models have the capacity to be more detailed for local UK areas? So if they won the BBC contract and it was commercially viable they could supply the detail?

I imagine the new provider will buy the data and models from the Met Office. As they were produced with public funding, the MO has to sell this data/models on request, but can charge.

I'm curious as to how this will affect our (Environment Agency) flood forecasting. Flood forecasting relued on quality weather forecasting, we havens great relationship with the MO in this respect. Be interesting to see how it pans out. We'll still have this, but if the MO have lost a significant funding stream, then will they be able to continue to provide the same level of service to other users?

I reckon you are right about the buying in Bike. Hope it doesnt affect other services. Many places would be sunk without decent flood forecasting.

Tigermoth, it would cost millions in terms of rewriting models and computing power I'd have thought.

What will happen to the lovely Carol and Tomasz? They're employed by the Met office aren't they?

I've given up on the BBC and Met Office and follow a local dude on Facebook who is much better plus he swears like a trooper and takes no shit so he is like a mumsnet version of the weather

I don't understand why the BBC and MET office forecasts are so very much at odds with one another most of the time, when they purport to be from the same source.

I find the Met Office spot on for 24-36 in advance.

It wasn't so spot on this morning for here. Even at 10.00 am the Met Office website promised clear sunshine up to 12 noon then cloud and rain for the afternoon. We had cloud and rain this morning from 9.00 am and now it has brightened up with sunshine this afternoon.

One thing I have noticed is the BBC weather for my locality always gives the temperature a couple of degrees higher than the Met Office forecast for my locality.

I assume this because the BBC give the maximum temp and the Met Office give the average temp.

The Telegraphs point of view.
They are right, the app is pants. But people arent watching the app on tv.

Stephanie, I wonder that too. my specualtion is that there is a large lag between the bbc showing the forecast (on repeat!) and from when the met office produced it. Also, I think much of the met office sites local forecasts on their website is autogenerated by computer, without the intervention of human forecasters. Thats why sometimes in warnings you will see the chief forecaster adding in extra interpretation.