The Society is delighted that MetLink has been such a well received project over the years and we think that the time is right now to review where we can improve the capabilities it offers. With this in mind, the MetLink team have decided to redevelop the MetLink project over the next year or so with the aim of making it as relevant as possible to those teaching weather and climate in schools, in whatever part of the school curricula.
After consulting widely the main decision we reached is that there will not be another of our usual active observing phases. You will be able to continue to input weather observations into MetLink for a while, but we envisage phasing out this feature over the coming year, as other resources become available on the MetLink site. However, the observations and images that have already been submitted to MetLink will continue to be available to MetLink participants.
Instead of this, we will be seeking observations for much more targeted, curriculum linked observation campaigns. The first of these is our big urban heat island experiment, which is about to start (http://www.metlink.org/urban) and which we are very excited about! We only have a few places identified at the minute but if you are interested in doing something in your area then let us know.
For those who wish to continue a regular submission of observations throughout the year, then you may like to consider submitting weather observations to the Climatological Observers Link (http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/col.html). Other participants might like to contact Sylvia Knight (education@rmets.org) to explore alternative options for continued weather observation.
Thank you again for your continued support to MetLink. We hope you will enjoy the new developments as they come on line and we look forward to seeing you involved in our future observing experiments.
Paul Hardaker