Thank you to Andrea Bishop for providing us with this guest blog as part of Tech For Good month at techSPARK.
Our weather intelligence empowers government and industry to make smarter decisions with serious impact. From keeping flights efficient, to helping balance the energy grid and supporting healthcare with life-saving warnings. Our work isn’t just about forecasts, it’s about stronger resilience, smarter operations, and a safer, more sustainable future.
We are a force for good
Being a ‘force for good’ is one of the Met Office’s five values and in the world of tech, we use tech for good too. By combining cutting-edge science and data innovation, we demonstrate how technology can be harnessed to protect lives, support communities, and build resilience in the face of climate change.
Supercomputing for climate and weather resilience
At the heart of the Met Office’s work is one of the most advanced weather and climate supercomputers in the world. With greater capacity and even higher performance, our new supercomputing system will take weather and climate research and operations to the next level.
It is the first cloud-based supercomputer dedicated to weather and climate science, and will set new standards for industry, leveraging the combined strengths of the Met Office and Microsoft.
Its benefits will include:
- more accurate warnings of severe weather, helping to build resilience and protect the UK population, businesses and infrastructure from the impacts of storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts.
- enabling groundbreaking new climate change modelling, developing the potential of our expertise in climate science to help build a resilient, low carbon economy.
- ensuring the UK can continue to lead the field in weather and climate science and services, helping it to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050.
- securing the Met Office and the UK’s prominent, authoritative voice, directly contributing to the UK’s global reputation for scientific research and innovation.
- being powered through use of 100% sustainable energy and market leading energy efficiency, saving thousands of tonnes of CO2 in the first year of operational service alone.
An increase in supercomputing capacity will lead to an improved understanding of expected future rainfall trends and extremes, as well as changes to sea level, along with their impacts at a local level. This will aid decision-making around flooding and the associated damage to property and disruption to infrastructure and services in the present day and future climate.
Harnessing AI and machine learning
The revolution in AI and machine learning represents the next frontier in forecasting developments, with huge potential to drive forward new advances in weather and climate science. AI-based models have already shown their ability to be fast and accurate at a significantly lower computation cost and the Met Office, working with leading industry partners, is working to ensure improvements can feed into forecasts in a safe and reliable way.
Making data accessible
Technology for good is not just about what organisations know, it’s about how they share it, and we make our data as accessible and understandable as we can. For example, the Met Office partnered with Esri UK to create an interactive Climate Data Portal, giving businesses, councils, and communities access to over 60 layers of climate projections.
From mapping flood risk to visualising future heat stress in cities, this tool empowers decision-makers at all levels to plan adaptation strategies.
Innovation, research and partnerships
The Met Office Research and Innovation Strategy aims to extend the frontiers of weather and climate knowledge through pioneering research. It also strives to advance our world-leading people, partnerships and infrastructure for the weather and climate community, as well as to help risk-based decision-making. Additionally, the strategy introduces our National Capability, which combines the driving forces of science, technology, and observations to deliver our science and services, support national and international needs, and respond to emergencies.
The Twinning Capability for the Natural Environment (TWINE) programme was delivered by the Met Office in partnership with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with research exploiting the potential of digital twinning technology to transform environmental science.
The power of weather intelligence
An independent study estimates that the Met Office will deliver £56 billion in value over the next decade – a return of £18.80 for every £1 invested.
We are the UK’s national weather and climate service, with over 1200 public and private sector customers, bringing in over £330 million of revenue annually, with 97% of emergency responders and 83% of the public trusting the organisation for their decision making when it matters.