The Government has finally commissioned a review of New Zealand’s weather forecasting system, State Owned Enterprises Minister Duncan Webb says. This follows on from over a decade of formal complaints from WeatherWatch.co.nz and recent news stories from the Listener and NZ Herald exposing the double up and lack of transparency from Niwa in particular.

Just last month NZ Herald editor Shayne Currie wrote a piece titled “Niwa bosses refuse to front up” over transparency about why Niwa has decided to compete head on with MetService and cannibalise MetService’s profit – especially when Niwa is no longer paying dividends back to the Government each year.

“MetService Te Ratonga Tirorangi and NIWA Taihoro Nukurangi have capability critical to the delivery of aspects of weather forecasting in New Zealand. As the impacts of climate change become more frequent, we must ensure our weather forecasting system is cohesive,” Duncan Webb said. 

New Zealand is the only country to have two tax funded weather agencies competing against each other – and against the private sector that funds their existence.

The Government says the weather forecasting review will inform the best approach to improving the system, focusing on the future needs, better integration across the forecasting system and relevant trends within the context of climate change.

“MetService Te Ratonga Tirorangi and NIWA Taihoro Nukurangi are critical agencies when it comes to responding to weather events caused by climate change. 

“A connected weather forecasting system that is integrated with our understanding of flooding impacts on communities and our nation’s infrastructure is essential.

“Our systems should reflect the interrelationship between climate science, forecasting, hydrology, and coastal hazards to help us better plan for, and respond to weather events,” Duncan Webb said.  

The review will be led by Te Tai Ōhanga the Treasury and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Hikina Whakatutuki, and will commence in September 2023. 

The review’s final report is anticipated to be with the Government in February 2024.

Currently Niwa directly competes with MetService – both using tax funding to do so – and neither Government Agency has free real-time open data (something considered ‘very normal’ in Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Japan etc).

WeatherWatch.co.nz welcomes the overdue review and hopes MetService eventually absorbs the new commercial Niwa weather spin-off so that they’re working for all New Zealanders and not just producing news headlines for clicks. “Mr Webb talks a lot about Climate Change in his press release today – it would be good to see Niwa going back to Climate science and not competing with MetService daily with a duplicate public weather forecasting product which has zero to do with Climate Change” says WeatherWatch.co.nz CEO Philip Duncan.

“With climate change increasingly a political issue this merging of two agencies could finally bring open weather data to NZ – currently these two commercial weather forecasting agencies cherry pick data to be released in news stories and there is little transparency or open use of tax funded historical data” says Duncan.

MetService is the official weather forecaster and no senior politician in Government in 10+ years has been able to explain – or endorse – Niwa getting into commercial weather forecasting to compete head on with MetService, especially when Niwa is failing to be open and transparent with the public about Niwa’s intentions and profits.

• WeatherWatch.co.nz