The Government will look into an apparent double-up in which New Zealanders are paying millions of dollars a year to support two national weather forecasting agencies.
State-owned enterprise MetService is New Zealand's official provider of weather warnings and a range of government-funded forecasts.
But in recent years Crown research institute climate agency Niwa has boosted its forecasting unit, building up a vigorous social media profile and employing extra meteorologists who predict and comment on approaching extreme or notable weather.
Niwa is spending $18 million upgrading its ultra-fast supercomputers. These not only generate climate-change projections and scenarios of the effects of natural events, but, according to Niwa's website, also produce "the six days of NiwaWeather forecasts that help you find the best time to do all the important things you want to do".
Others in the weather sector, including private forecasting companies WeatherWatch and Blue Skies Weather and Climate, are worried taxpayers are now having to fund competing government agencies and say the situation is unparalleled elsewhere in the world.
