Civil Airports (Hansard, 26 January 2001)

§ Dr. Moonie

This is a matter for the chief executive of the Meteorological Office. I have asked the chief executive to write to the hon. Member.

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Letter from Peter Ewins to Mr. David Atkinson, dated 26 January 2001: I am replying to your question to the Secretary of State for Defence about the closure of meteorological outstation observing offices at civil airports. This matter falls within my area of responsibility as Chief Executive of the Met Office. The Met Office has been pursuing a policy of increasing automation of observing for a number of years now. We are currently conducting trials to assess the feasibility of extending the automation process into areas where, up to now, manual observations have been the only means of meeting our operational requirements. The trials are due to finish in April this year. Subject to a successful outcome we will, over the following twelve months, withdraw our observing staff from eleven of our observing sites throughout the UK, three of which are located at civil airports, namely Tiree, Stornoway and Kirkwall. In addition, we have recently withdrawn our observers from Bournemouth airport following the installation of automatic observing equipment. The functionality of this equipment, however, is not as high as that in prospect at Tiree, Stornoway and Kirkwall since some of the data we need continues to be collected manually. However, following a network review, we found that this could be done more cost-effectively from our nearby observing sites at Yeovilton and Lee-on-Solent, rather than from Bournemouth. It is important to note that observations will continue from all the affected sites, with the exception of Hemsby in Norfolk, where our network review has shown that the observations we need can be collected more cost-effectively from a neighbouring site, without compromising data coverage. Moreover the technical developments required to enable and support our programme of automation will also allow us to exploit other existing locations from where automated data may be gathered much more frequently at little extra cost, further improving the observations network and raising service quality. The loss of manual observations will not, therefore, compromise the availability or quality of our forecasts. On the contrary, ultimately we believe our plans will further improve forecasting accuracy. At civil airports, manual observations are also carried out for the provision of Aerodrome Meteorological Reports (METARs). METARs are necessary for airport operations and it is important to note that responsibility for producing them rests entirely with the airport operator not the Met Office. Prior to the automation of our site at Bournemouth, the airport operator, Bournemouth International Airport (BIA), Limited, fulfilled this responsibility by asking our observers to make the observations in return for providing us with accommodation free of charge. Since the handover of observing services at Bournemouth, BIA's own Air Traffic Control (ATC) staff have been making the observations. Our observers are also currently carrying out the necessary observations at Tiree, Stornoway and Kirkwall on behalf of the Highlands and Islands Airport Limited (HIAL). We are working with HIAL to help them ensure that their staff are suitably prepared in terms of both training and equipment to enable them to take over the observing task. This is not a new arrangement. Observations are already carried out by ATC staff for the provision of METARs at many other civil airports throughout the UK. We will continue to keep our own requirements under constant review and look for further opportunities for automation in order to ensure that the observations network is being run in the most cost-effective manner possible, without compromise to quality.