Informative and intelligent articles that are also compelling for a wide audience, easy to understand and fascinating to read
Articles for the Met Office magazine
The UK’s Met Office publishes magazines designed to inform and entertain an extraordinarily wide range of people. Some are ordinary citizens interested in the weather – and who indirectly, through taxation, support the Met Office. Others are more direct stakeholders – such as:
- People who work in the many businesses and organisations that depend on the Met Office’s services
- Government and Ministry of Defence officials
- Academics and scientists
- Professional meteorologists and colleagues from around the world.
The articles need to be informative and intelligent, but interesting and accessible to a wide audience
Articles in Met Office publications such as the magazine Barometer need to inform and entertain this wide audience. The content needs to be intelligent, accurate and relevant. It also should be compelling and comprehensible to a lay audience while meeting the needs of professional users.
In producing articles for Barometer, I interviewed scientists and professionals from across the Met Office and the Hadley Centre, which specialises in climate research. Content written for the magazine has included:
- An article on the link between weather and asthma and how accurate reporting helps sufferers and health professionals
- A feature on forecasting for the rail networks
- An in-depth piece on the Boscastle flood – and an explanation as to why it was not accurately forecast
- An article on tea growing in the British climate
- A concise history of the summer solstice and how it has been celebrated through the ages
- News stories on a range of climate change issues
- A feature on the links between weather and sport
- A colour piece on weather, climate and volcano chasing
- An explanation of why supercomputers are so important to accurate forecasting
- Profiles of leading scientists
- Profiles of weathermen and women who appear on BBC TV
Sarah Quick, who at the time was Senior Editor at the Met Office, said: “With skilful copywriting and editing, Simon has helped the Met Office reach all of its customers worldwide.”
The Boscastle flood was a significant failure for forecasters. But the Met Office wanted to explain why it was difficult to predict, not hide from the criticism.