Met Office Citizen Weather Station Data Service

Tender description

<p>The Met Office has been operating the Weather Observations Website (WOW; https://www.wow.metoffice.gov.uk/) since 2012, enabling members of the public to submit their weather station observations and exploiting them as an increasingly important source of third party data for use in forecast applications. This data has been demonstrated to have a positive impact, in particular when incorporated into our high resolution mesoanalyses and nowcasting applications, measurably improving our ability to predict the weather over the UK. Going forward, there are plans to evaluate the impact of assimilating data in regional numerical weather prediction models, currently covering a “UKV” modelling domain equivalent to the British Isles and its surrounds. Our objective is to significantly increase the number primarily of observed near-surface measurements of a variety of meteorological parameters by utilizing data from citizen weather stations in near-real time, supplementing the data from the ~300 Met Office automatic weather stations in the UK. This is an early market engagement in order to further inform our requirements and budgets to create a business case. Further rounds of early market engagement may follow.</p> Keywords: Forecasting, weather, data