Braemar Weather Station (Hansard, 7 July 1994)

§ Mr. Hanley

This is a matter for the chief executive of the Meteorological Office under the terms of his framework document. I have therefore arranged for him to reply to the hon. Member.

Letter from J. C. R. Hunt to Mr. George Kynoch, dated 7 July 1994: I am responding to your Parliamentary Question concerning the cost of upgrading the weather station at Braemar. Braemar is a private observing station which provides data on a voluntary basis to the Meteorological Office at Edinburgh at the end of each month. At present the Meteorological Office has no requirement for the daily receipt of the data. If the need arises the cost of upgrading the station to provide automated transfer of the data to Bracknell will be £2,500; additionally there will be other direct running and replacement costs of about £1,000 per annum. These costs do not include the Meteorological Office overheads necessary to process the data or supply services based upon them. Alternatively the observations could be passed by telephone to our Office at Aviemore for the cost of the telephone calls, from where they would be sent to Bracknell through our communication system; whilst this would avoid upgrade costs, the Office staff time involved in collecting and sending the data to Bracknell would be around £1,500 per annum.