Framing the sky: The (re)birth of weather forecasting on british television

Despite their best efforts, MO officials were now playing a balancing game they had rarely encountered in their previously limited public engagements. The MO was no longer forecasting at a high level to specific interest groups, but instead walking the tightrope of making their televised output accessible, but not oversimplified, ever aware that "we need not treat our audience as such complete morons as only to be able to understand the words 'fine, fair and showery'."53 During the early 1950s, senior figures at the MO had begun to redirect the focus of the organisation from traditional, specific service users, such as civil aviation, toward a national meteorological service which catered to the broader general public. In early 1954, when the MO and the BBC launched their new format featuring a qualified meteorologist, they fundamentally changed the British public's re-lationship with the organisation. The popularity of the new format, coupled with the huge increase in the popularity of television, significantly raised the public profile of the MO. All those involved with the project welcomed this increased prominence, especially senior MO figures who considered it a great opportunity to educate the public, disseminate knowledge, and raise the profile of their discipline. However, end users of the forecasts were more interested in the utilitarian aspect that predicting future weather could bring to everyday life. Thus, in conjunction with improving forecasting capability, in the years to come the MO reduced its emphasis on education and past weather systems in TV bulletins. Another unexpected public reaction to the new level of visual communication afforded by the TV forecasts was an increase in the amount of blame cast at the meteorologists and MO if forecasts were wrong. This blame was influenced by the visual and linguistic aspects of the bulletins, but most importantly, by the decision to have an expert rather than a TV announcer presenting the segment. Those involved with the TV project had a rudimentary understanding that the language, face, and visual aspect of the forecasts were important. Yet no one involved pre dicted the significance that presenting probabilistic forecasts in deterministic language the viewer at home could relate to, would have on the subsequent development of the public's risk perception and expectations of weather forecasts in the UK. Given the purported educational motives of MO officials, the absence of televised weather forecasts from contemporary and subsequent debates of science communication on UK television, further highlights the speed with which the revised format became about utility and usefulness for the end user. The creation and subsequent proliferation of forecasts through the wide-reaching and visual format of television launched in January 1954 was a decisive moment for the MO, as it continued its expansion toward becoming a truly public-facing organisation. The opening-up of services so they would be of greater use to the public fits narratives of the international development of meteorology, which highlight a broadening role for national meteorological services in society during the period.54 As the new format went on to become the main contact point with the MO for members of the public, its launch in 1954 was a significant event which increased the MO meteorologists' profile as scientific experts. I hope in briefly presenting this one specific case study I have given you some insight into my wider research on this subject. In my PhD thesis, by framing the extreme weather events I examined through an analytical lens of theoretical literature on risk and blame, I sought to enrich accounts of the interna-Tionalisation of twentieth-century meteorology. My thesis considers how developments in technology and communication affected those giving forecasts at the MO, and those receiving them throughout the UK. It explores the importance of the public, media and political framing of extreme weather events as natural or anthropogenic crises on the emergence of blame in such events. The implementation of new forecasting practice, and wider forecast dissemination using new technologies and approaches, were all vital in enabling the MO to become an expert scientific body, relied upon by both the government and the public. However, as we have seen, in expanding its operations, deploying more forecasts and warnings, and developing a more prominent public profile, the MO inadvertently became a manager of the risks presented by extreme weather conditions. As we allegedly enter a 'post-Truth' world,55 understanding how, in the recent past, specific scientific disciplines and organisations have gained, kept and lost positions of trust and authority in society will continue to be of increasing importance.