Met Office

The Met Office, known before November 2000 as the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Led by CEO Penelope Endersby, the Met Office gives weather forecasts and studies climate change.

Even though it is part of the UK Government, the Met Office helps the Scottish Government, Welsh Government, and Northern Ireland Executive get ready for bad weather. It gives important information to help these governments plan and make choices. The Met Office has an office in Edinburgh, Scotland, and a forecasting center in Aberdeen.

History

The Met Office started on 1 August 1854 as a small group led by Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy to help mariners. After a big storm in October 1859 caused a ship called the Royal Charter to sink, FitzRoy created the first warning system for storms. He set up 15 stations along the coast to send warnings to ships.

New technology, like the electric telegraph, helped share these warnings quickly. The Met Office began giving weather forecasts to newspapers in 1861. After FitzRoy passed away, forecasts stopped for a while but started again in 1879.

After the First World War, the Met Office joined the Air Ministry in 1919. Because airplanes needed weather information, many weather stations were set up at RAF airfields. In 1990, it became an independent part of the government, still working closely with the military.

Later, in 2011, the Met Office moved to a different government department, but it still works with the military, especially with teams that help plan battles.

Locations

The Met Office moved its main office from Bracknell to a special building in Exeter in 2003. This new building was opened in June 2004.

The Met Office works all over the world. It has a weather forecasting center in Aberdeen and offices in Gibraltar and the Falklands. There are also smaller offices at places like the University of Reading in Berkshire and Wallingford in Oxfordshire. The Met Office also helps at Army and Air Force bases in the UK and other countries. Sometimes, weather forecasts for the Royal Navy are made by naval officers.

Forecasts

The Met Office gives important weather warnings for the United Kingdom through the National Severe Weather Warning Service. These warnings help keep people safe during bad weather that could affect travel.

In September 2015, the Met Office and Met Éireann in Ireland started a storm naming system so storms affecting the UK and Ireland have easy-to-remember names. The first named storm was Abigail in November 2015. In 2019, the Dutch national weather service, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, joined this system.

The Met Office uses a special computer model called the Unified Model for its weather forecasts. This model can predict weather over different times and areas. It is used for everyday forecasts and special sets of forecasts that look at many possible outcomes.

The Met Office works with the Environment Agency to give advice on flood risks for England and Wales through the Flood Forecasting Centre. In Scotland, a similar service is provided by the Scottish Flood Forecasting Service, working with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

The Met Office makes forecasts for seasons and longer periods and shares these with people around the world. It was the first to be recognised globally for these long-range forecasts.

ITV uses Met Office data for its weather forecasts on ITV Weather. The BBC used to use Met Office forecasts but switched to another provider in 2015. However, the BBC still uses some Met Office data, especially for severe weather warnings and the Shipping Forecast. In July 2025, the BBC announced it would work with the Met Office again.

The Met Office is one of only two World Area Forecast Centres, known as WAFC London. The other is in Kansas City, Missouri. These centres help guide airplanes safely by giving important weather information for flight paths.

The Met Office also runs the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre, which gives warnings about volcanic ash that could affect airplanes. This centre covers the British Isles, the north east Atlantic, and Iceland.

The Met Office also gives forecasts about air quality, using special computer models to predict pollution levels and their effects on health.

The Met Office coordinates climate predictions for the next ten years from centres around the world as part of its role with the World Meteorological Organisation.

Weather stations

Weather stations are places where people or machines watch the weather very closely. Some stations use machines to do everything, some use a mix of machines and people, and others have people doing all the work. Many stations can tell us what the weather is like right now, and they might also have cameras. There are special stations high up in the sky that send information down using balloons.

Some stations only work during certain hours, while others work all the time, especially at places where airplanes fly. Most stations tell us about the weather once every hour, but some, like those at airports, tell us twice every hour and even more often when the weather is bad. Some stations only record things like how hot or cold it is and how much rain falls, usually checking in the morning and evening. The people who watch the weather might not always work for the Met Office—they could help airplanes land, guard near the coast, or work at universities.

Meteorological Research Unit and the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM)

Main article: RAF Cardington

Meteorological research used to happen at RAE Bedford with instruments carried by special balloons. This stopped in the 1980s when the RAE facility closed.

The Met Office kept a research unit called the Meteorological Research Unit (MRU) at Cardington until 2025. The MRU studied a part of the atmosphere called the boundary layer using a balloon kept in a small portable hangar.

FAAM

Main article: Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements

The Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) is part of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and is based at Cranfield Airport. It works with the Natural Environment Research Council.

The FAAM was created to help UK research groups study the atmosphere around the world using airplanes. Its main airplane is a special BAe 146 type 301, registered as G-LUXE, owned and run by BAE Systems for Directflight Limited.

The FAAM helps study many things, like:

• Radiative transfer in clear and cloudy air;
• Tropospheric chemistry;
• Cloud physics and weather patterns;
• How small mesoscale weather systems work;
• Boundary layer and turbulence;
• Remote sensing to check ground instruments;
• Checking satellite data with real measurements;
• Testing satellite instruments;
• Research in the UK and other countries.

Directors general and chief executives

Here are the leaders of the Met Office:

• Sir William Napier Shaw from 1905 to 1920
• Sir Graham Sutton from 1954 to 1965
• Sir Basil John Mason from 1965 to 1983
• Sir John Houghton from 1983 to 1991
• Julian Hunt from 1992 to 1997
• Peter Ewins from 1997 to 2004
• David Rogers from 2004 to 2005
• Mark Hutchinson from 2005 to 2007
• John Hirst from 2007 to 2014
• Rob Varley from 2014 to 2018
• Penelope Endersby from 2018 onward

Arms

The Met Office is the main weather service for the United Kingdom. It is part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Penelope Endersby has been the leader of the Met Office since December 2018, and she is the first woman to hold this position. The Met Office gives weather forecasts and studies climate change.