Why don't Met Eireann provide more info free

dewsbury

Why don't the met. provide all the information they have on the weather free on their website!

E.g. they have loads of detail about the weather in Leinster but I have to pay if I phone for this info.

Surely all this info should be in the public domain??

How much do they make by charging for it?

We (as tax payers) already pay for the running of the met. Why should we pay again for info that is readily available?

Any views?

Snowbie

Under funded i guess.
Dept of the environment fund/employ the met service personnel, so i would imagine any extra income is greatly needed by Glasnevin from contributions or payment for information from archived data.

Danno

Actually, alot of "phone-the-weather" services are your bog-standard broadcasts relayed. It's just convienience you are paying for.

have to say the weather stations people on this website give better information than met eireann. And in real time too. Your waiting half an hour for the hourly update to update!!

Check out some foreign met sites and the difference is big.
Met eireann dont do much more than next day forecasting really

Yeah as taxpayers where the hell do all our moeny go I wonder sometimes, didnt we have the best performing economy for like a decade?

darkman2

dewsbury wrote: »

Why don't the met. provide all the information they have on the weather free on their website!

E.g. they have loads of detail about the weather in Leinster but I have to pay if I phone for this info.

Surely all this info should be in the public domain??

How much do they make by charging for it?

We (as tax payers) already pay for the running of the met. Why should we pay again for info that is readily available?

Any views?

WTF?!? Just look in here. Major weather events will be covered and we have access to alot of weather material - remember boards.ie's resident weather service is here! Much better then all weather agencies put together:D

Mothman

dewsbury wrote: »

Why don't the met. provide all the information they have on the weather free on their website!

E.g. they have loads of detail about the weather in Leinster but I have to pay if I phone for this info.

Surely all this info should be in the public domain??

How much do they make by charging for it?

We (as tax payers) already pay for the running of the met. Why should we pay again for info that is readily available?

Any views?

Give an example of what kind of detail you are refering to.

Paddy.1

dewsbury wrote: »

We (as tax payers) already pay for the running of the met. Why should we pay again for info that is readily available?

Any views?

Good point I suppose, but at the same time, and as already been mentioned, they do have funding issues. One thing I will give Met Eireann is that they do provide a quality service, and either way, they charge relatively little for the data they hold. They are never going to make a huge profit from this, as it is, in the main, a specialist service.

dewsbury

Mothman wrote: »

Give an example of what kind of detail you are refering to.

Phone service such as 1550 122 112.

This will give several minutes specifically about leinster which (presumably) is more detailed that the few seconds I get on the TV or on www.met.ie.

dewsbury

Danno wrote: »

Actually, alot of "phone-the-weather" services are your bog-standard broadcasts relayed. It's just convienience you are paying for.

The broadcast will only mention Dublin as a minor part of the overall forecast. The phone service will spend much longer talking about Dublin and giving more detail (presumably).

The same applies to any part of the country.

dewsbury

darkman2 wrote: »

WTF?!? Just look in here. Major weather events will be covered and we have access to alot of weather material - remember boards.ie's resident weather service is here! Much better then all weather agencies put together:D

Where exactly is the boards weather service .... how do I find it?

Danno

Here you go: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=374

Trogdor

I enquired about this last summer and this was the reply, very fair i think that they can hold some data to recoup costs. It would be interesting to see just for one day just exactly what data they do have. Would've been very interesting to do some work experience with them as well if they hadn't stopped doing it:mad:

"As you correctly state, Met Éireann, as a Division of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, is a State-funded organisation. This is broadly similar to the situation of most of the other National Meteorological Services [NMS] in Europe.

I must clarify right from the start that all Met Éireann data/products are made freely available but, in some cases, a charge is levied. The rationale behind this is clarified in the definition of Met Éireann’s ‘Public Service Functions’ which is available from www.met.ie as a downloadable .pdf document.

As you can no doubt appreciate, the establishment and maintenance of the infrastructure required by a modern meteorological service is substantial and we were, some years ago, tasked by the then Minister with responsibility for the Service to engage in commercial activities with a view to recovering some of the costs incurred.

In common with many other NMSs, Met Éireann engages in a mixture of public service and commercial or ‘cost-recovery’ operations. Some NMSs have decided not be involved in commercial activities but in those circumstances the data/products of the NMS are invariably sold to private sector operators. This is a constantly changing situation and Met Éireann continues to monitor developments and reviews its own policy in this area from time to time.

I must also clarify that Met Éireann does not have any lightning detection system in place but relies on the services put in place by other NMSs. The outputs from these systems are distributed to NMSs as part of the global co-operation between NMSs throughout the world."

Danno wrote: »

Here you go: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=374

if they put ads on their website and had all the info online they would probably make more money

Putting data online is easy. Just look at the weather stations from this board - its amazing the amount of raw data fantastic

Danno

And there's one in south Laois ready to be online hopefully Monday evening!!!

nice!