A storm is brewing between an Auckland business and a state-owned meteorology agency over access to severe weather warnings.
News website Weather Watch is developing a page devoted to live weather warnings - the content of which will be provided by the MetService.
But Weather Watch forecaster Philip Duncan says the state-owned enterprise (SOE) informed him this week that they would only provide him with land-based warnings - not thunder storm warnings.
He says the warnings are meant to be a public service and believes the MetService is not co-operating because they consider Weather Watch to be competition.
"These are the warnings that talk about tornadoes and severe thunder storms - these are very important warnings.
"For us not to be able to have them displayed automatically on our website is a public safety nightmare."
MetService spokesperson Daniel Corbett says the company emails free weather warning alerts to anyone who signs up - thunder storm warnings included. He says including automated updates on the Weather Watch website is a "technical issue".
The MetService was established in 1992, out of the former New Zealand Meteorological Society, as a commercially-run SOE.
Duncan says Weather Watch, which launched its website in 2008, has tens of thousands of readers each month and should have ready access to all severe weather warnings.
"Weather Watch relies on Government warnings, as do all private forecasters around the world, to provide us with this public safety service.
"So to be limited in what warnings we can display on our website just seems insane."
He says the Government should run the MetService in a way which puts public safety before profit.
"As far as I can tell most other countries don't operate in this way.
"They operate it as a public department that has the private weather forecasters like Weather Watch working very, very closely with these Government forecasters."
He has asked MetService to explain, but is yet to hear back.
Duncan is also putting his concerns to Minister of State Owned Enterprises Tony Ryall.
"The Government has commercialised the MetService to the point where we can't work very well with them.
"MetService is not very interested in working with us despite us asking over and over how can we work together."
Earlier this year recreational pilots were told they would be charged for the MetService's specialised aviation forecast MetFlight GA.
The Civil Aviation Authority had initially sponsored the service but pilots complained access to the service should be free as it was a safety issue.
- Auckland Now
No comments:
Post a Comment