When the Bureau of Meteorology introduced MetEye
TM
in Western
Australia in October 2012, its services to remote communities
improved exponentially. From that time, seven-day forecasts for
temperature, wind, waves and rainfall, among other elements,
became freely available for tens of thousands of locations across
the state and 60 nautical miles out to sea.
The latest readings of temperature, rainfall, cloud cover
and river conditions were also made available by the Bureau
on the one map-based web page – a one-stop shop for weather
information, whether you were dropping a fishing line in Lake
Argyle, operating mining equipment at Tom Price, or hiking the
Bibbulmun Track in the south-west.
MetEye
TM
allows you to pan and zoom around a map of Western
Australia, and you can find weather, ocean and river information
for any point on a six kilometre-grid across the state. The locations
can be saved as ‘favourites’, and you can combine or layer weather
data on the one map.
You might want to see the rain radar image together with the
satellite picture of cloud, the air pressure chart and temperatures
on the one map. And if you are more interested in just the data,
all the information is also presented in text form.
The service provides an overview of the state of the weather –
a situational awareness – for miners and companies of all sorts,
recreational anglers, divers, surfers and walkers, but also to fire
and emergency services staff.
The data will be tremendous support in determining the rate
of spread of a fire, whether the fire is in a metropolitan or rural
area. For miners, it will provide an early warning of the threat of
dust due to strong winds and high temperatures, or the threat of
flooding due to heavy rain.
While MetEye
TM
delivers a new equality of service to all West
Australians, it has its limitations. There are times when a finer
level of detail is required, especially during severe weather
events, and the Bureau provides this detail through its well-known
weather warning services and products. Cyclone track maps, spot
fire forecasts, flood warnings and wind warnings should always
be consulted at times of dangerous weather.
For similar reasons, the Bureau’s Commercial Weather
Services division will continue to provide site-specific, tailored
weather forecasts for mining and offshore operations. There are
situations where a handcrafted forecast product, focused on the
needs of the client, can reduce the risk and optimise the efficiency
of operations.
Offshore drilling rigs and port operations are examples where
a decision to shut down can cost tens or hundreds of millions of
dollars. When there is a fine line between continuing or closing
operations, when the wave height and period are close to the cut-
off point, or when wind speed is close to the limit but might ease,
a personalised service and advice can be valuable.
The development of MetEye
TM
has been made possible, in part,
because of the Bureau of Meteorology’s longstanding commitment
to work cooperatively with meteorological services around the
world. The access Australia has to satellite imagery from the
Japanese Meteorological Agency is one of the most significant
agreements, but not the only one.
Two of the key collaborations for MetEye
TM
were with the
US National Weather Service and the UK Met Office. A US
forecasting software system and a British numerical model of the
atmosphere, ocean and land were made available to the Bureau
through cooperative agreements. They have been adapted for use
in Australia and improved by Bureau researchers, meteorologists
and software developers over the past five to 10 years.
Mike Bergin
Regional Director, Western
Australia
Bureau of Meteorology
New Year’s Eve dust storm closing in on Port Hedland
Simon Phelps Photography
Minesite 2013
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