Met Office and Microsoft share information on what their partnership means for the future of the Met Office

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Introduction:

The Open Consultative Platform (OCP), established at the 18th World Meteorological Congress in 2019, serves as an open, constructive, and participatory framework for addressing the grand challenges of the global weather enterprise. In the spirit of collaboration, mutual respect, and trust, the Platform enables all stakeholders to stay abreast of issues and opportunities, both institutional and technological, to motivate collaborative, win-win approaches and to nurture innovation. The cooperation paradigm incorporates the active sharing of ideas and interacting with each other to move from isolated actions within a single stakeholder to coordinated initiatives developed and shared across sectoral and organizational boundaries. Since February 2020, a series of WMO's OCP Innovation Seminars have provided opportunities to public, private, academic, and civil sectors to share innovative practices and ideas. We expect these Seminars to contribute to further engagement among these sectors for even better meteorological services to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change mitigation, and disaster risk reduction.

Background:

In April 2021, the UK Met Office signed a multimillion-pound agreement with Microsoft for the provision of a world-leading supercomputing capability that will take weather and climate forecasting to the next level, and help the UK stay safe and thrive. Once up and running, the new supercomputer will help ensure government, industry, and communities are better prepared for severe weather and the changing climate through more detailed models, better forecasting of local-scale weather, and increased access to greater amounts of weather and climate data. Led by the Chief Executive, Prof Endersby, the Met Office is working with Microsoft to harness their next supercomputing capability and data technologies to deliver scientific and technological innovation for weather and climate forecasting. The audience will hear and understand opportunities arising out of such an innovative partnership to enable better contribution to society. This Innovation Webinar provides the opportunity for participants to learn more about this leading example of public-private engagement, and to ask questions on the value of this partnership, and how it started and is progressing.