UPDATED — In a revealing message posted on MetService’s Facebook page Tuesday night the State Owned forecaster has suggested giving weather data back to the public is dangerous, despite it being standard practice in Australia, the USA and Canada – and supported by our own Civil Defence.

MetService Tuesday confirmed to WeatherWatch.co.nz that we couldn’t access live, or even hourly public weather observations (which have little to no commercial value to WW but are a strong interest point to the public) due to commerical reasons – put another way, unless we and others pay substantially for it.  MetService last year made double record profits and are New Zealand’s tax payer owned forecaster.  MetService told WeatherWatch.co.nz the only free observations we could get from the NZ Govt/MetService would be three hour old data, which is basically pointless in our view.

They are yet to reply to us to confirm how much it would cost, but in 2011 they lifted the price of us reporting the daily highs (which has little to no commercial value to us, but interest to many of you) from $1200 a year (which they called just an ‘admin fee’) to $28,000 a year – so we cancelled the service obviously, as this is free in most western countries. 

However their response to comments from the public last night suggests they look down at the private weather sector, along with pilots, farmers, growers and many other people and sectors who want to access and use this most basic weather data.

The reply said MetService forecasts “prepared by our skilled and dedicated meteorologists are a lot more help to New Zealanders than throwing data out into the world without thought for who might use it and how”.

This goes against free data policy that Civil Defence supports. It also goes against every western nation post the year 2000 as the internet age came in and free weather data became standard, as it: A) generated more tax revenue for governments as other businesses used the data and sold it, and B) helped the public better understand severe weather risks.

Using MetService’s own logic we aren’t to be trusted with free live data – but we can be trusted with it if we pay for it.  And are they saying we can’t be trusted with free live data, but we can be trusted with using free data that’s out of date and therefore far less accurate? 

WeatherWatch.co.nz is asking the public to support our campaign to finally free up public weather data by letting us know if they’ve had prices jacked up, or basic data simply too expensive to purchase.

Both Weather.com and CNN in the USA have also told WeatherWatch.co.nz in the past year that data from MetService/NZ Govt is so ‘incredibly expensive’ it is the reason they won’t buy data here.

We support MetService’s right to make a strong healthy profit, but as a government owned organisation we believe they have a responsiblity to free public data up as we see with GeoNet, or overseas with government weather forecasters such as the ones in Australia, the USA and Canada.  

MetService receives millions of dollars in funding to forecast warnings and marine to the NZ public – however they won’t break down in black and white for the public exactly where the public funding goes and if it is used for their commercial forecasts or commercial projects to compete fiercly against private forecasters and other small businesses who need public weather data.

We want to work alongside MetService/NIWA but not while it’s a one way street that appears to place their own profits well before the general good of the public. 

– WeatherWatch.co.nz