  Weather prediction is one of the greatest scientific and technical successes
of the last century. Today, National Meteorological Services routinely produce
forecasts that have a major positive impact across society and many economic
sectors. This success has been intrinsically linked to improvements in
supercomputing which has increased various orders of magnitude following Moores
Law, enabling underpinning increases in model complexity and resolution.
However, there are good reasons to believe that we may have reached the end of
this particular road. The combination of technological discontinuities and
contextual changes mean that NMS are facing the highest level of uncertainty
and change in many decades. This brings new organisational challenges, altering
existing power and social structures within NMS. Analysis from other industries
that have faced similar transformations in the past show that the period of
change we are entering could be as long as thirty years and that there is a
substantial risk that the foundations of the weather industry could be altered
significantly. Therefore, NMS need to use their resources not only to make best
use of the diminishing improvements available within the current technology
trajectory but to simultaneously innovate in new technologies to ensure they
can generate value in the future. This paper analyses the strategic options
available to National Meteorological Services.
