Mining - meteorological solutions

Weather and climate directly affect mining operations, sustainable development, health and safety, and profitability. In addition, the mining industry faces increasingly complex challenges about corporate and social, and environmental responsibility.

Thanks to our world-class forecasting and science capability, we provide a real cost benefit to mining companies, globally and at every phase of development.

Why use Met Office services for mining

Our weather and climate consultancy is designed to help you:

• Demonstrate corporate and social responsibility
• Satisfy regulators
• Decide site feasibility
• Inform site design plans
• Manage ongoing operations
• Predict changes in weather caused by mine-induced topographical variances
• Plan logistics and transport infrastructure (rail, road, pipeline or port)
• Predict resource availability such as water

Our services at a glance

Planning and design

We carry out climatology analysis for the present and the future:

• Local weather observations
• High-resolution numerical model data
• Future Climate Extremes
• Regional Climate Modelling
• Climate Impacts Modelling

The results can be used for environmental impact studies, including hydrological and ecological analysis.

Ongoing operations

Weather can stop opencast mining operations and significantly affect operational effectiveness, or in extreme cases, cause landslides, floods, or pollution.

Monthly, seasonal and decadal forecasts

Site-specific forecasts to support:

• strategic planning and maintenance
• critical and costly operational activities
• predicting mining yields well in advance

VisualEyes™

Identify favourable and unfavourable weather conditions with our innovative, web-based ‘weather dashboard’. The interactive map enables you to view and anticipate all aspects of weather for multiple sites, including rain, temperature, fog, ice, snow and lightning.

Closure and restoration

After a mine has closed we can use our unique understanding of climate change and its impacts to identify the frequency and severity of weather events which will influence the development of environmental restoration programmes.

Our climate models simulate weather systems on a global scale to allow:

• the production of vegetation impact maps to assess the effect of future mining on flora and fauna
• climate ‘proofing’ mining designs over a 20-50-year period, including ponds, tailings and support infrastructure

Case studies — How our weather and climate science research add value to mining operations

• High-resolution modelling to support mining design in West Africa, using Big Data
• Review of a mine re-development in Central Asia
• Water resource planning in South America