The Met Office has a long history of engaging citizens to support its science. For example, since the 1850’s the Met Office has coordinated the collection of marine observations from the both the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy to enable the highest quality forecasts in support of safety of life at sea. This Feb 2014 presentation provides an overview of several citizen science initiatives in which the Met Office is involved, focusing on sharing lessons learned during the development and ongoing running of the award winning Weather Observations Website (WOW) which has received over 200 million global weather observations since its launch in 2011.

1. Weather Observations Website (WOW)
Aidan Green, 22nd February 2014
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2. Talk Plan
• Long history working with
citizen scientists
• The Weather Observations
Website (WOW)
• Collaboration
• Questions and discussion
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3. Long & proud history of working
with citizen scientists...
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4. 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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5. Weather Observations Website
• 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
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6. 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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7. 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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8. Collaboration essential for success
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9. © Crown copyright 2014 Met Office
© Crown copyright 2014 Met Office

10. 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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11. Any questions?
QUESTIONS
&
DISCUSSION
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