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Weather Observations Website (WOW)

Aidan Green, 22nd February 2014

Talk Plan

• Long history working with citizen scientists

• The Weather Observations Website (WOW)

• Collaboration

• Questions and discussion

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Long & proud history of working with citizen scientists...

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Weather Observations Website

• wow.metoffice.gov.uk

• More observations required for forecasters, prediction models, & verification.

• WOW is a portal for sharing observations.

• Automatic collection from automatic weather stations.

• Manual input of data – e.g. daily climate observers

• Ad-hoc weather reports – e.g. weather photos; twitter snow reports; impacts of the weather.

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© Crown copyright 2014 Met Office

• Upload and download of historic datasets

• Map, tabular and graphical views of data for different time periods

• Metadata important – drives star rating system

• Built on Google Cloud infrastructure – resilient, scalable & flexible

Weather Observations Website

WOW by numbers...

• WOW – since launch in June 2011:

• Over 200 million observations submitted;

• Over 4,800 different weather observing sites established;

• Over 775,000 site visits, from 192 different countries.

• Won 2 UK IT Industry Awards in 2012 recognising collaborative approach and innovative use of Cloud Technology.

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Future Plans

• PhD studentship and development of plans for quality assurance and data assimilation of user contributed observations – including new layers & feedback to users.

• Further collaboration with schools and Department for Education to improve its use as an exciting teaching aid;

• Greater  use  of  new  weather  ‘impacts’   reports – floods, damage to property, disruption to transport etc;

• Rolling developments based on user feedback;

• Development of social aspect (Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, forums, etc);

• Growth through collaboration.

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Collaboration essential for success

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© Crown copyright 2014 Met Office © Crown copyright 2014 Met Office

Summary

• The Met Office has a long and proud history of working with citizen scientists.

• The Weather Observations Website (WOW) is our most recent citizen science initiative, and has been a huge success.

• Over 200 million observations submitted;

• Over 4,800 different weather observing sites established;

• Over 775,000 site visits, from 192 different countries.

• Collaboration is key to success of citizen science initiatives, and will essential for the continued growth & success of WOW.

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Any questions?

QUESTIONS &

DISCUSSION

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