We are very please to announce the addition of Greg Pearson and Frank Sonntag to our team of scientists. Greg has come from his previous role as head of Research and Development at New Zealand Metservice to head up a new atmospheric group within MSL. Greg has extensive experience with the configuration and implementation of state of the art numerical weather prediction models. His skills will be fully utilised to continue to provide the best possible marine forecasts and hindcasts, and also to develop new land based meteorological services. Frank is an atmospheric scientist with outstanding skills in the design and development of operational forecast and hindcasting systems.

The new group’s first job has been an upgrade of the core operational model used to generate forecasts for WeatherMap. Other ongoing development projects are investigating optimal NWP configurations for our marine forecast services and the development of new forecast and hindcasting tools to service the wind energy sector.