The MET Office
Events
Brief
Popularly suspected of being the source of the UK’s characteristically changeable weather, the UK MET Office is both a beloved national institution and Meteorological research centre of global renown. One of only two Global Forecasting Centres worldwide, an increasingly important part of the role of the MET Office is to communicate their expert understanding of global climate and weather phenomena to businesses, policy chiefs and the general public at large. Since 2012. Pufferfish have been working with the MET Office to engage and inform a wide variety of audiences expert and amateur alike, helping them take advantage of the innate qualities of spherical displays in communicating complex global data and processes.
Solution
The MET Office became one of the first proud owners of the PufferSphere 900 displays shortly after the product first launched in 2012. The small footprint system with mid-sized screen offered a great balance of portability and prowess, made the PufferSphere feel perfectly at home in their Exeter headquarters, but left open the opportunity to ship to external events in specialist fight cases. The internal design team at the MET Office have helped researchers visualise everything from global lightning strikes and volcanic ash plumes to climate change models and scenarios, all taking advantage of the unique suitability of spherical displays to bring global data to life in a truer projection than any flat map.
Summary of outcomes
The MET Office communications team have been able to put the work of the scientists and researchers on proud display internally, but have also utilised smaller interactive Pufferfish solutions out on the road at outreach events ranging from expert forums and government showcases to public meet and greets. Having the display on stand not only helps the team draw in a crowd, it also provides a great platform for discussions around the data on display. In the time since then the technology has moved forward opening up new visualisation possibilities. Pufferfish are always delighted to team up to deliver some new twists for MET Office activations with the magnetic PufferTouch system, whether that be adding smaller screens to aid use in brighter environments, higher resolution projectors to better match data resolutions or interactive on-sphere touch to add a touch of magic to presentations to the public.