In this episode, co-presenters Alan Thorpe and David Rogers talk to hugely experienced broadcast meteorologist, Gerald Fleming.

Gerald (pictured) is the former head of the forecast division of Met Éireann where he was responsible for almost all of the public output of the weather service. One of his tasks was to oversee and organize Met Éireann relationships with Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE – Ireland’s public broadcasting service) and appeared often as an on-air broadcast meteorologist with television and radio. As the public face of Met Éireann he has contributed frequently to the media and has trained many meteorologists in broadcast meteorology nationally and internationally through the World Meteorological Organizations’ Public Weather Service Programme.

About the WeatherPod

Alan Thorpe is an atmospheric scientist who has worked as a Professor of Meteorology, as head of the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre and, most recently, as Director General of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts.

David Rogers is an oceanographer turned meteorologist, a former Chief Executive of the UK Met Office and now a consultant with the World Bank helping countries improve their weather, hydrological and disaster management systems and services.

Weather information is an international resource critical to saving lives, making business and society more efficient, and building resilience to the growing impacts of extreme weather & climate change.

Each month, WeatherPod will explore how the public, private and academic sectors – which make up what’s informally called the Global Weather Enterprise – co-operate to produce weather information and make it widely available. It will also examine how weather affected public and private enterprises actually use it. 

Extreme weather often impacts the poorest the hardest. So the WeatherPod will look beyond the wealthier countries to the poorer and less developed ones – which host most of the world’s population – to examine how the rich and poor use weather &  climate information – the differences, the things in common, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In each episode Alan and David will invite a leading expert to join them to discuss a key topic. Alongside this there will be a section called: ‘Wow – That’s Interesting!’ which features a newsworthy story or two about the Global Weather Enterprise.

Please send your feedback on The WeatherPod to us at: support@gweforum.org

Theme music by John Cockram, john@mjcmusic.co.uk