date: Wed Oct 21 15:45:58 2009
from: Phil Jones
subject: Re: Follow up, and a query
to: "Heffernan, Olive"
Olive,
Good to hear you'll be going to one of the UKCIP PIPs (Projections in Practice). Hope
you've gone onto the UKCP09 User Interface and seen what can be got and downloaded.
There are regional PIPs as well as sector-specific ones organized by UKCIP. There is a
more specialized one on the WG being organized in Newcastle on November 26.
You can call now if you like - say between 4 and 5pm.
On the data issue I reckon if the Met Office were sold off (privatized) then it would make
the data access issues much worse.
The best comparison country would be NZ. There the NZ Met Service is a company, but
climate research goes on in NIWA , which is a Crown Institute. Should any government here
in the UK go down the privatizing route, I'd expect a similar split between the research
and the weather forecasting side.
The Hadley Centre might possibly become a NERC type centre like CEH and BAS?
NZ's is the only that I know that is privatized.
There are a lot of advantages of keeping the Met Office together as advances in modelling
from weather forecasting feed into the climate model and improvements the climate people
make feed through to the weather model.
I've no idea who would contemplate buying the Met Office. It won't be another Met Service.
MoD might want to lose the Met Office, but DEFRA and DECC don't.
These are all personal views. I'm going to see a few MOHC employees in a few weeks and I
thought I'd ask what views on the inside were. This has been talked about in the past, but
nothing much has ever happened.
Another person to ask in Brian Hoskins who chaired one of the afternoon sessions last
week.
Cheers
Phil
At 15:00 21/10/2009, you wrote:
Dear Phil,
It was good to meet you in person last week at the Royal Society, and Im now feeling
very enthusiastic at the prospect of attending one of these regional workshops on
climate predictions. So thanks for your help on that front, with introductions and on
background.
On a completely separate issue, I came across this story on BBC News on Sunday, which
says that a Tory government would consider privatizing the Met Office.
[1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8312999.stm
Im interested in what the implications and I wonder if you would have a few moments to
talk to me about it today?
Aside from the potential for loss of jobs, Im primarily interested in whether this would
this have any implications for the Met Offices ability to share data with other
institutes or with other countries. Could it have any implications for its research
agenda? Or is a privatized Met service a common model in other countries?
If you let me know a suitable time to call, I can phone this afternoon. Look forward to
hearing from you,
Best
Olive
Olive Heffernan, PhD, CMarSci
Editor | Nature Reports Climate Change
[2]www.nature.com/climate
4 Crinan St | London N1 9XW, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7014 4009
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7843 4563
Email: [3]o.heffernan@nature.com
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Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
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