The story
The weather forecasting service began in 1861, when a spate of shipwrecks prompted the Government to start a storm warning service as part of the then Marine Department.
Forecasting remained a marine service until 1926, when it became part of the newly formed Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1927 Edward Kidson was appointed Dominion Meteorologist by Earnest Marsden. At the time the New Zealand Meteorological Service was a very small institution with a staff of five and a complete lack of useful long-period meteorological records.
At the outbreak of World War Two in 1939, forecasting became part of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. The focus on aviation continued with a move in 1964 to the then Department of Civil Aviation, which in 1968 became part of a new "super ministry", the Ministry of Transport.
During the 1980s there was increasing pressure on government funding for meteorology in New Zealand, together with a government-wide move to "user-pays" for specialised services, and to more autonomy and accountability for government departments. A combination of commercial competition in the deregulated market for meteorological services and reform of publicly funded science led to the establishment of MetService as a state-owned enterprise on 1 July 1992.
In 2013, MetService invested in a 49% shareholding in MetOcean Solutions Limited, a New Zealand oceanographic services company. MetOcean was an established company specialising in oceanographic analysis for research and forecasting for many purposes, including ports, offshore oil & gas industries and surfers.
In early September 2020, MetService's website came under a wave of distributed denial of service attacks that also targeted the New Zealand Exchange, Stuff, Radio New Zealand and Westpac bank.
Relationship with NIWA
In 1992, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) was spun off from the MetService to become a separate Crown entity focusing on long-term weather patterns and climate change. Following the separation of the two organisations, MetService remained the official weather forecasting authority. Over the next 32 years, the two entities clashed over access to books in the old MetService library and the accuracy of their weather reports. In January 2007, the New Zealand Government brought a mediator to repair relations between the MetService and NIWA. In 2009, the two organisations signed a memorandum of understanding to work more closely together. However, the two organisations continued to clash over the accuracy of their weather reports.
In 2020, MetService chief executive Peter Lennox told Parliament that they have more weather models and meteorologists and produced more detailed forecast than NIWA. In 2022, MetService objected to the Department of Conservation's purchase of NIWA's forecasts for use in its parks, claiming it was "inappropriate for public service" due to its reliance on automated forecasts without intervention from professional meteorologists. MetService has a contract with the Ministry of Transport to provide weather forecasts.
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Following several extreme weather events in 2023, the Government commissioned the Sapere research group to explore how the two meteorological services could combine their capabilities. In late September 2024, Science, Innovation and Technology Minister, Judith Collins announced that NIWA would be acquiring MetService in order to streamline weather forecasting services and give easier access to weather information from one source. Metservice issued a statement welcoming the merger, stating "we see this as an opportunity to have a more connected weather forecasting system that allows a better integration between climate science, forecasting, hydrology, and coastal hazards."
Earth Sciences New Zealand
On 14 May 2024, Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Shane Reti announced that the MetService and NIWA would be integrated into a new Public Research Organisation called the New Zealand Institute for Earth Science. However, this requires the passage of the Meteorological Services (Acquisition and Policies) Legislation Amendment Bill, which as at the dissolution of Parliament on 1 October 2026 had not yet occurred.
From Wikipedia’s article on MetService, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5