Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Phillip Duncan: WeatherWatch head forecaster on NIWA acquiring MetService

Transcript

Phillip Duncan: WeatherWatch head forecaster on NIWA acquiring MetService · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A storm could be brewing, as the government has agreed
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: in principle to merge Newer and Met Service to bring
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: us a stronger weather forecasting system. Merging the two it's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: been a big topic of conversation after it was found
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: that Met Service modeling failed to predict the scale and
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the intensity of the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods. The plan
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: would see Newer acquire met Service, with Met Service keeping
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: its role as out authorized meteorologist. Philip Duncan is a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: weather watch head analyst and weather communicator. He's with us
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: this morning.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Hey Philip, good morning, good too with you.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Good to have you on the show. Will these two
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: be able to get along and play nice?
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Do you think? Well? I mean they're going to have to.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: That decision has already been made and it's going to
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: be a bit of a tough ride, I think to
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: some of the Met Service team, because it's probably a
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: little bit deflating to be merged into a brand new
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: weather forecasting company that sort of started to aggressively attack
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: you about ten years ago, which is what NEEWA did
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and Nie were invested a lot of money into going
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: after Met Service, and they had no approval from cabinet
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: to do this. It was. It was done sort of
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: secretly and with no transparency. So it's a bit of
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a weird journey to get to this point. But the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: government has definitely done the right thing because for a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: government to have two opposing agencies doing weather forecasts and
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: saying different things is a recipe for a disaster.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and we had one didn't we would say, yeah,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: is it fair to say that met Service missed that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Auckland Anniversary flood? I mean, wasn't that such a freak
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: event that no one really knew it was coming?
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Did you? Absolutely? Yeah. The Auckland flood event was basically
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: a downpour, just an isolated downpour, but it was over
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: the top of our largest city. But you ask farmers
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: around New Zealand have you ever had a downpour that's
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: done monumentally a big flooding, And a lot of them
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: will say yes at some point, not to say that
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: that was equal to everyone else, but you know, it
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: was a singular downpour. There was no you to modeling
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: on the planet that picked what actually happened, and so
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: it was. It was a tough ride, but it is
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: a good example of what is happening here you got
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: me were with this supercomputer that is paid for by
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: the people, and then you've got met Service. The weather
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: forecast is funded by the people to do warnings, but
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: they don't share the equipment. And so you're at one
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: side saying I can see something happening, and then when
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: you say, well, will you be sharing that with met Service,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: MEWA goes no. For commercial reasons, We're not going to.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And that's the problem that's done. Where do you get
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: you because you're a private business, right Philip, where do
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you get your data from? Is it from do you
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: buy it from KNEEWA or someone?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, we couldn't afford it. In fact, that's the reason
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: why this is a bit of a concern. We went
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: to the Commerce Commission about neeware because their pricing was astronomical.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: We're talking about millions of dollars to access something that's
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: free in every other modern country, and so it's a
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: it's designed to keep NEEWA in power. The one positive
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: about this. Well, so to answer your question, we were
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: forced to basically buy data from America. Now, there are
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: two different things with weather forecasting. One is the actual
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: forecasting data. So the data we buy from the weather Company,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: which used to be IBM's the most accurate in the world.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So you know the fact that we were forced to
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: go down that road, that route and end up with
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: that data's turned out to be the best thing for us.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: But the downside is we don't have access to historical
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: data and that means no one in New Zealand really
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: learns as a forecast. We don't learn from our mistakes
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: automatically because that data is missing. So in Australia, get
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: something wrong, the computers will go all right, that's what happened,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: this is what we forecast. Let's learn from that mistake.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: But in New Zealand, MEWA holds on to that information
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: and says you can't have it, so met Service doesn't
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: learn from it, and then met Service doesn't share the radar,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: so Newa doesn't learn from that. And so as a
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: private company, we've just decided to just say basically, we're
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: not going to get involved in that historical stuff. We'll
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: just focus on forecasting only.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: That can't be a good thing for the rest of us. Philip,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for that. That's Philip Duncan. He's
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a weather watchhead analyst and weather communicator, talking about this
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: merger that is going to happen between met Service and
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Newer sounds like it about time it did happen too.
• 4:14
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• 4:17
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• 4:18
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• 4:20
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