Culture

Public service

The Weston Park weather station comes from a long tradition of public service and support for research, with its original purpose being to contribute to the public health work of the nearby hospital. Ground temperature was originally observed at Sheffield Weston Park in order to understand outbreaks of fatal illness in the city.

In line with this tradition, Alistair recognises the data produced by the museum station as being “part of our heritage” and within “public ownership”, and he is dedicated to contributing to a wider local weather data ecosystem.

As curator, he answers over 200 queries a month from local people about weather conditions, makes regular appearances in the local newspaper – the Sheffield Star (“They’ve even got a stock photograph of me now!”), provides datasets for local students and academics, and provides a Twitter feed of observations for 600 followers.

Alistair's quotes on this page are from the following recordings:

• Audio recording of interview with Alistair McLean [WP_01]

• Transcript of interview with Alistair McLean [WP_01]

Sheffield’s weather station

Alistair McLean describes how the weather station is part of the local fabric of Sheffield:

“I think that that weather station out there means more to the people that work in the museum service and the people of Sheffield than it does to anyone else.”

Alistair has a deep knowledge of the history of the weather station, and has many stories to tell about its past. He reports how when a Campbell Stokes device – a valuable piece of observing equipment – was stolen from the roof of the museum in the 1990s, the people of Sheffield rallied to replace it, fundraising £3,000 “in a matter of weeks”.

Pride and responsibility

These local and historic connections are a source of pride and responsibility for the curator:

“I’m quite proud of my involvement with the weather station, possibly more proud than I am of any other aspect of my curatorial work.”

“You just feel like you’re the next link in the chain, which of course conveys a lot of pressure on to make sure you don’t cock it up as well [laughs]. The weather station, during its life has been under threat on a couple of occasions. I think it’s safe to say that, and you don’t want you to be the last curator.”

Data quality

These values and feelings have a significant impact on the data that is generated by the weather station. A lot of care is taken in ensuring the quality of the data:

“Quality was very important, as it still is, because any data that we sent was rigorously checked by the Met Office and any data that was considered wrong for whatever reason was always sent back with a red underline, and we felt bad that we’d made a mistake of some variety. It didn’t happen very often.”

Data sharing

The data that is produced by the weather station is highly valued and flows relatively freely for others – including the Met Office – to use and add value to.

However there are some restrictions on the re-use of the data that reflect Alistair’s understanding of the relationship between public ownership and private exploitation:

“I think that there probably is a risk that if you make it open for everybody, including people that are going to make an awful lot of money from it, you’re ripping off the country to a certain extent.”

With this in mind the station sustains itself through charging for some commercial uses of the data and levying token charges of around £15 for those who want to use the data to support insurance claims.

This belief challenges the increasingly common idea that publicly funded data should be freely available – as Open Data – for commercial exploitation. This is an issue that is debated by many academics, policy makers and public data producers and users.

Austerity and vulnerability

Despite its importance to the local community and climate research, in recent years Weston Park weather station has been threatened by public sector funding cuts which have led to staffing reductions in the museum service.

In order to adapt to some of these pressures and ensure the continuity of the Weston Park climate record, the previous curator allowed the Met Office to add its own weather observation equipment to the weather station compound in 2008.

“I do think [the Met Office] consider the dataset and the fact that it’s still growing important.”

But, as Alistair describes, this development, whilst likely necessary for the longer term preservation of the station, has impacted upon the relationship between the local museum weather station and the national Met Office:

“It’s more one sided I think, the relationship. In the past they needed us more than we needed them, whereas now it’s not the case. It’s much less of an equal relationship I think from that point of view.”

“[The museum station] means much more to us than it does to the Met Office I think. The Met Office may say differently.”

Resilience

Yet, for the time being the museum weather station remains resilient, defended by a curator who recognises the new Met Office equipment as “secondary to our equipment”, and with confidence that the people of Sheffield would “do their nut, not to put too fine a point on it” if the museum station was ever threatened with closure.