The essence of the project called ‘MetLinkInternational’ is that participants make and exchange weather observations once a day for two weeks and, with the help and guidance of meteorological professionals, analyse and interpret the observations. The project is internet-based.
The original concept was that the project would link primary and secondary schools across Europe, so the pilot scheme, which ran in January and February 1998, was called ‘MetNetEurope’. In the event, a school in southern Africa took part, encouraged to do so by a teacher at Radley College, one of the schools in the United Kingdom (UK) that participated.
Encouraged by the success of the pilot scheme, the Education Committee of the Royal Meteorological Society agreed in September 1998 that the project should run again in January and February 1999. They also agreed that the name ‘MetLinkInternational’ would be used, to reflect their decision that schools in Africa be invited to participate, along with participants in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. The name originally suggested, ‘MetNetInternational’, had to be dropped when, in the summer of 1998, the project’s organizers discovered that ‘MetNet’ had been registered by Weather Services International.
Twenty-six organisations took part in the 1999 MetLinkInternational project, one of them the school on Tristan da Cunha. The project’s success was such that the Education Committee of the Royal Meteorological Society decided in September 1999 that MetLinkInternational should become an annual event to be run in January and February each year. The committee decided, too, that the project should expand year by year and thenceforth be made available around the world, not just those in Europe and Africa. To help the project develop, the UK's Meteorological Office (The Met Office) generously provided sponsorship for 1999 and 2000.
Finding a time of year that suits
everyone is not easy, given the various constraints. Running the
project in January and February is not ideal for those in the
southern hemisphere because their summer vacations extend well into
January. Examination constraints render April, May and June
inconvenient in many parts of Europe and North America, and the
months of June, July and August are out of the question not only
because of examinations but also because they are the months when
schools in the northern hemisphere break for their summer vacations.
In some countries, schools break from June to August. In others, they
break from July to September. The period September to November is not
appropriate for teachers in many countries in the northern hemisphere
because their pupils have not by then learned sufficient about the
weather to make the project worthwhile.