Transforming a Modern Observations Network

The demands on a modern meteorological observing system are challenging. There are strong drivers to provide more frequent observations, at higher spatial resolution in order to monitor severe weather and feed the increasingly complex NWP models. At the same time a scalable and resilient network that can operate at lower costs are key drivers. This presentation will discuss three areas of work at the Met Office that aims to address some of these challenges. The first area is the plan for the Met Office to move its core observations network to a cloud based system utilising an internet of things approach to gathering land network data. The aim is to reduce costs, increase resilience and provide a scalable system for the future. The second area looks at the use of land observations sampled at 1 minute intervals in order to visualise and understand the impacts of severe weather events. The final area of discussion will be the use of opportunistic observations such as Mode-S winds from commercial aircraft and real time data from cars to supplement traditional core observing networks.