Each month we are going to introduce you to a different section at RAF Marham to show the different roles and varied work that we do. The first of our ‘Meet Marham’ features is the Met Office. The Met Office is staffed by a mix of Royal Navy METOC’s (Meteorological and Oceanographic specialists) as observers and forecasters and civilian UK Met Office staff. The main role of the Met Office is to advise the flying squadrons on the conditions expected at RAF Marham and throughout the Operational area for their sortie. This ensures the aircrew remain safe, the airframe is safe and is operated within limits while as much as possible is gained from the flying activity. The forecasters look out over the remaining week and beyond to see how environmental impacts can either be mitigated against or exploited. This could be something as simple as rain/wind for a social event to larger scale planning issues surrounding multi-aircraft deployment to the carriers or Atlantic Ocean crossings.
The forecasters also look at the weather further afield, the aircraft may get airborne out of Marham where the weather is fine, but is the tanker going to get out of RAF Brize Norton and are the conditions at 20’000 FT over Northern Europe conducive for inflight refuelling? The team also look to unseen effects to see how business at RAF Marham and throughout defence maybe effected. This can be regarding Radar or Radio range prediction i.e. How will an aggressor’s radars be operating and how can we best exploit that information to our own advantage. What is the impact of space weather or solar flares? What are the conditions at the Aircraft Carrier and will that make deployment unachievable on that day?
Depending on the weather forecast at Marham the Met Office will put out warnings through the internal system advising personnel about potential weather warnings such as an increase in wind speed, rainfall or snow and ice.
The Royal Navy staff come to Marham to train post qualifying courses and to gain experience through their careers. They will obviously rotate away from RAF Marham to other roles within the fleet which sees service on the QEC carriers and to the combat teams on Type 23 frigates and Type 45 destroyers. Here, the exploitation of the undersea battlespace also falls within their remit with Anti-submarine warfare forming a large part of their day.
If any sections have an event coming up and they want to talk through how the wind, rain , cloud, sunset times, temperature may affect the event then the Met Office staff are always on hand to help or advise.
