"xmetman" wrote in message
...
I was just thinking about why a strike by the Met Office is always doomed to
failure before it starts, and that's because so many of the various Met
Office systems are fully automated, and as long as they don't fail, either
through a hardware or software fault they will continue to run, possibly
indefinitely barring a complete comms failure.

It's true operational staff add value to products that are already produced
by the various NWP models, but I also imagine that a lot of forecast data is
transmitted without it ever being seen by anyone, let alone a forecaster. To
get the maximum effect from a 24 hour strike these operational systems would
need be to shut down before the staff left the building and somehow I can't
see that happening.

Years ago when we went on strike the temperature and rainfall wasn't read at
0900 and 2100 on the day of the strike, but now we have AWS, so the
observational and climate data is safe.

From home I can see weather radar images and satellite imagery from the Met
Office web site, I can see observational and forecast data from the Met
Office DataPoint site, I can see UK SYNOPs courtesy of FSU & OGIMET, I can
see the latest TAFs & METARs courtesy of the ADDS service. BBC TV weather is
probably showing me the latest NWP on TV. In comparison to what a lot of the
outstations received in the way of data in the 1970's and 1980's that's a
wealth of information enough to run a forecast office.

I think that all the strike will achieve is highlight to the public that the
Met Office computer systems that are in place are so resilient that they
hardly need people at all, so why do we need so many? Obviously some systems
such as gale warnings and alerts aren't fully automatic at the moment, but I
should imagine work on automating these systems are in the pipe-line.

In the foyer of the Met Office in a few years time, you will probably find a
plaque above the door that reads:

"Will the last person to leave the Met Office please turn out the lights -
but for God's sake don't turn off the servers or the super-computer!"
=========================

That is true for the operational side but what a lot of people forget is
that the biggest profession in the Met Office is now Research. Especially
big earning ones like Climate Change. As I keep saying the long term
strategic aim of the MetO is to make all observing and forecasting
automatic. Observing has been largely done and they are now a long way
towards automating the entire forecast process. That will be achieved fully
in the 2020s. Robots may be presenting the TV forecast by the 2030s. But
Research will continue and so will IT and system development although AI
will slowly take over some of those roles in the 2020s with full automation
of IT by 2030 when machines will be able to maintain and debug themselves.
In essence what I am saying is the MetO like other companies will only use
humans where required. Soon that will just be in Research, Service and HR
management and various business functions plus the NSWWS (for the time
being).

Will
--
" Some sects believe that the world was created 5000 years ago. Another sect
believes that it was created in 1910 "
http://www.lyneside.demon.co.uk/Hayt...antage_Pro.htm
Will Hand (Haytor, Devon, 1017 feet asl)
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