2023-11-13 20:36:38
Forecasters monitor Cyclone Freddy on the screens of the Météo-France station, in Saint-Denis (Reunion), February 20, 2023. RICHARD BOUHET / AFP
As intense weather events follow one another, the announcement may come as a surprise. Météo-France forecasters, and all staff of the public establishment, were called to strike on Monday, November 13, by the CGT, FO and Solidaires unions, to oppose the establishment of a new work organization “unfinished and controversial”, which leads to a decline in the quality of the service provided, according to them.
They denounce, in a press release (also signed by the CFDT), a ” degraded mode “ forecasts available on the website, the mobile application as well as for the services provided to professionals who “are no longer systematically updated during the day”. “The centralization and automation of the provision of data present on the site and the application” of Météo-France is the target of the protest. “Until then, forecasters had the means to interpret and correct the data output by the different digital models used and to adapt the forecasts to each territory”explains Jérôme Lartisant, secretary general of FO, forecaster for twenty-five years, in Strasbourg.
Monday, November 13, the switch to a program called “3P”, for “production forecast program” – in progress since September – would therefore, according to the trade union organizations, have “concrete impacts on the information given to the general public and for the safety of people and property”. “Thus, automatic forecast data (which will henceforth be the only ones accessible on general public applications) could be inconsistent with the vigilance which will integrate the expertise of forecasters”they describe in the press release.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Faced with global warming, the still inaccessible treasure of Météo-France data
“Dizzying drop in staff”
The strengthening of this automation is not contested by the management of Météo-France, which highlights the need to meet expectations “stronger than ever” in weather and climate services. “Thanks to technical progress, we can today strengthen the automation of our forecast database and also certain production tasks”explained management to Monde.
Météo-France uses a database which is refreshed very regularly with the latest observations and forecasts. « The 3P program facilitates the work of the forecaster by eliminating systematic manual entry and limiting it to supervision with occasional interventions in the database »assures management, which also highlights the fact that the new tool would facilitate the synthesis by forecasters of the “very large amount of data produced by weather forecast models” and extraction “relevant information for each customer”.
You have 40% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#MétéoFrance #social #movement #contesting #increased #forecast #automation