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Speaker 1: A storm could be brewing, as the government has agreed

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Speaker 1: in principle to merge Newer and Met Service to bring

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Speaker 1: us a stronger weather forecasting system. Merging the two it's

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Speaker 1: been a big topic of conversation after it was found

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Speaker 1: that Met Service modeling failed to predict the scale and

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Speaker 1: the intensity of the Auckland Anniversary weekend floods. The plan

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Speaker 1: would see Newer acquire met Service, with Met Service keeping

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Speaker 1: its role as out authorized meteorologist. Philip Duncan is a

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Speaker 1: weather watch head analyst and weather communicator. He's with us

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Speaker 1: this morning.

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Speaker 2: Hey Philip, good morning, good too with you.

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Speaker 1: Good to have you on the show. Will these two

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Speaker 1: be able to get along and play nice?

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Speaker 2: Do you think? Well? I mean they're going to have to.

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Speaker 2: That decision has already been made and it's going to

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Speaker 2: be a bit of a tough ride, I think to

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Speaker 2: some of the Met Service team, because it's probably a

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Speaker 2: little bit deflating to be merged into a brand new

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Speaker 2: weather forecasting company that sort of started to aggressively attack

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Speaker 2: you about ten years ago, which is what NEEWA did

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Speaker 2: and Nie were invested a lot of money into going

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Speaker 2: after Met Service, and they had no approval from cabinet

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Speaker 2: to do this. It was. It was done sort of

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Speaker 2: secretly and with no transparency. So it's a bit of

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Speaker 2: a weird journey to get to this point. But the

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Speaker 2: government has definitely done the right thing because for a

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Speaker 2: government to have two opposing agencies doing weather forecasts and

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Speaker 2: saying different things is a recipe for a disaster.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and we had one didn't we would say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: is it fair to say that met Service missed that

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Speaker 1: Auckland Anniversary flood? I mean, wasn't that such a freak

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Speaker 1: event that no one really knew it was coming?

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Speaker 2: Did you? Absolutely? Yeah. The Auckland flood event was basically

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Speaker 2: a downpour, just an isolated downpour, but it was over

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Speaker 2: the top of our largest city. But you ask farmers

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Speaker 2: around New Zealand have you ever had a downpour that's

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Speaker 2: done monumentally a big flooding, And a lot of them

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Speaker 2: will say yes at some point, not to say that

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Speaker 2: that was equal to everyone else, but you know, it

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Speaker 2: was a singular downpour. There was no you to modeling

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Speaker 2: on the planet that picked what actually happened, and so

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Speaker 2: it was. It was a tough ride, but it is

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Speaker 2: a good example of what is happening here you got

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Speaker 2: me were with this supercomputer that is paid for by

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Speaker 2: the people, and then you've got met Service. The weather

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Speaker 2: forecast is funded by the people to do warnings, but

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Speaker 2: they don't share the equipment. And so you're at one

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Speaker 2: side saying I can see something happening, and then when

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Speaker 2: you say, well, will you be sharing that with met Service,

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Speaker 2: MEWA goes no. For commercial reasons, We're not going to.

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Speaker 1: And that's the problem that's done. Where do you get

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Speaker 1: you because you're a private business, right Philip, where do

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Speaker 1: you get your data from? Is it from do you

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Speaker 1: buy it from KNEEWA or someone?

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Speaker 2: Oh, we couldn't afford it. In fact, that's the reason

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Speaker 2: why this is a bit of a concern. We went

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Speaker 2: to the Commerce Commission about neeware because their pricing was astronomical.

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Speaker 2: We're talking about millions of dollars to access something that's

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Speaker 2: free in every other modern country, and so it's a

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Speaker 2: it's designed to keep NEEWA in power. The one positive

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Speaker 2: about this. Well, so to answer your question, we were

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Speaker 2: forced to basically buy data from America. Now, there are

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Speaker 2: two different things with weather forecasting. One is the actual

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Speaker 2: forecasting data. So the data we buy from the weather Company,

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Speaker 2: which used to be IBM's the most accurate in the world.

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Speaker 2: So you know the fact that we were forced to

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Speaker 2: go down that road, that route and end up with

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Speaker 2: that data's turned out to be the best thing for us.

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Speaker 2: But the downside is we don't have access to historical

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Speaker 2: data and that means no one in New Zealand really

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Speaker 2: learns as a forecast. We don't learn from our mistakes

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Speaker 2: automatically because that data is missing. So in Australia, get

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Speaker 2: something wrong, the computers will go all right, that's what happened,

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Speaker 2: this is what we forecast. Let's learn from that mistake.

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Speaker 2: But in New Zealand, MEWA holds on to that information

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Speaker 2: and says you can't have it, so met Service doesn't

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Speaker 2: learn from it, and then met Service doesn't share the radar,

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Speaker 2: so Newa doesn't learn from that. And so as a

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Speaker 2: private company, we've just decided to just say basically, we're

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Speaker 2: not going to get involved in that historical stuff. We'll

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Speaker 2: just focus on forecasting only.

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Speaker 1: That can't be a good thing for the rest of us. Philip,

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Speaker 1: thank you very much for that. That's Philip Duncan. He's

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Speaker 1: a weather watchhead analyst and weather communicator, talking about this

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Speaker 1: merger that is going to happen between met Service and

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Speaker 1: Newer sounds like it about time it did happen too.

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Speaker 2: For more from News Talks B listen live on air

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Speaker 2: or online, and

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