date: Wed Oct 21 15:45:58 2009 from: Phil Jones subject: Re: Follow up, and a query to: "Heffernan, Olive" Olive, Good to hear you'll be going to one of the UKCIP PIPs (Projections in Practice). Hope you've gone onto the UKCP09 User Interface and seen what can be got and downloaded. There are regional PIPs as well as sector-specific ones organized by UKCIP. There is a more specialized one on the WG being organized in Newcastle on November 26. You can call now if you like - say between 4 and 5pm. On the data issue I reckon if the Met Office were sold off (privatized) then it would make the data access issues much worse. The best comparison country would be NZ. There the NZ Met Service is a company, but climate research goes on in NIWA , which is a Crown Institute. Should any government here in the UK go down the privatizing route, I'd expect a similar split between the research and the weather forecasting side. The Hadley Centre might possibly become a NERC type centre like CEH and BAS? NZ's is the only that I know that is privatized. There are a lot of advantages of keeping the Met Office together as advances in modelling from weather forecasting feed into the climate model and improvements the climate people make feed through to the weather model. I've no idea who would contemplate buying the Met Office. It won't be another Met Service. MoD might want to lose the Met Office, but DEFRA and DECC don't. These are all personal views. I'm going to see a few MOHC employees in a few weeks and I thought I'd ask what views on the inside were. This has been talked about in the past, but nothing much has ever happened. Another person to ask in Brian Hoskins who chaired one of the afternoon sessions last week. Cheers Phil At 15:00 21/10/2009, you wrote: Dear Phil, It was good to meet you in person last week at the Royal Society, and Im now feeling very enthusiastic at the prospect of attending one of these regional workshops on climate predictions. So thanks for your help on that front, with introductions and on background. On a completely separate issue, I came across this story on BBC News on Sunday, which says that a Tory government would consider privatizing the Met Office. [1]http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8312999.stm Im interested in what the implications and I wonder if you would have a few moments to talk to me about it today? Aside from the potential for loss of jobs, Im primarily interested in whether this would this have any implications for the Met Offices ability to share data with other institutes or with other countries. Could it have any implications for its research agenda? Or is a privatized Met service a common model in other countries? If you let me know a suitable time to call, I can phone this afternoon. Look forward to hearing from you, Best Olive Olive Heffernan, PhD, CMarSci Editor | Nature Reports Climate Change [2]www.nature.com/climate 4 Crinan St | London N1 9XW, UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7014 4009 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7843 4563 Email: [3]o.heffernan@nature.com ******************************************************************************** DISCLAIMER: This e-mail is confidential and should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have received this e-mail in error please inform the sender and delete it from your mailbox or any other storage mechanism. Neither Macmillan Publishers Limited nor any of its agents accept liability for any statements made which are clearly the sender's own and not expressly made on behalf of Macmillan Publishers Limited or one of its agents. Please note that neither Macmillan Publishers Limited nor any of its agents accept any responsibility for viruses that may be contained in this e-mail or its attachments and it is your responsibility to scan the e-mail and attachments (if any). No contracts may be concluded on behalf of Macmillan Publishers Limited or its agents by means of e-mail communication. Macmillan Publishers Limited Registered in England and Wales with registered number 785998 Registered Office Brunel Road, Houndmills, Basingstoke RG21 6XS ******************************************************************************** Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------