MPA with Applied Study students visit the UK Met Office

Students from the Master’s of Public Administration (MPA) with Applied Study, along with selected undergraduates and PhD students, spent a morning at the UK’s Met Office in Exeter. Students found out about the important work the Met Office’s International Development Team is doing around the world to provide information to improve planning to protect against natural disasters and extreme weather.

The majority of Exeter’s MPA students are civil servants from around the world, and students were interested to learn about the Met Office’s status as a Trading Fund, a self-funding body which delivers a mix of public and private contracts related to weather forecasting.

Highlights were a visit to the Supercomputer, the largest machine in the world dedicated to meteorological services, which runs 16,000 trillion calculations per second (16 ‘petaflops’!) as well as the UK weather Operations Centre, and the Space Weather Forecasting Centre.

Many thanks to Met Office staff for taking time out of their busy schedules to organise a really stimulating and engaging field trip.