The Met Office's Operational Surface Analysis Chart

The Met Office have routinely been producing surface analysis charts operationally since 1872. Early charts bear little resemblance to current operational analyses and evolved through the late 19th and early 20th centuries to take on board evolving concepts and notions, for example Bergen School frontal theory, with fronts starting to appear on these charts in the early 1930s. These charts, and subsequent charts can be found online in Met Office publications such as the Daily Weather Report.

Originally hand-drawn based on surface observations, as forecaster workstations developed in the 1980s and 1990s, production of these charts began to shift to become a wholly workstation-based graphical production process. Currently, the analyst - the duty Principle or Expert Operational Meteorologist in the Met Office's Expert Weather Hub - blends observational and model data to produce the surface pressure field and then uses a range of observational data supplemented by NWP to aid drawing the fronts. Conceptual models considered now extend beyond the Norwegian Cyclone Model to, for example, incorporate Shapiro-Keyser and Browning and Roberts Cyclone Models.

Meanwhile, improvements in satellite and radar imagery and NWP resolution have allowed analyses to become increasingly detailed, revealing structures and detail otherwise not present or immediately obvious in more conventional surface observations. This has undoubtedly led to an increase in detail in Met Office analyses. Concurrently, the scale of some features on the analyses can be relatively small, especially around the UK; this is quite deliberate and necessary as these charts are both used operationally and provide the UK's official weather analysis.

Inspired by questions about how these charts are made from a number of delegates at the EMS Annual Meeting in 2023, this presentation will offer a brief history of the operational surface analysis chart at the Met Office and, as one of the team of operational meteorologists producing these charts, then focus on using real world examples to illustrate the processes by which these human-produced charts are prepared.

That these charts remain human-produced, rather than automated and wholly-objective, is important to appreciate - this is felt to aid continuity between charts, can offer an indication of feature development and for many producing these charts maintains a link between the current and forecast weather situation, i.e. is a necessary part of the forecast process, and on a more romantic level for some of us these charts provide a link with our forefathers and pioneers.