Will another £30m 'supercomputer' and a better website mean no more 'bbq summers' from the Met Office? Despite the cost to the public purse, the committee said the best way to improve forecasting of bad weather is to invest in a computer. The Met Office operates as a subsidiary of the Ministry of Defence but charges customers including the taxpayer for its various services Andrew Miller MP, chairman of the cross party group, explained that developments in knowledge of natural patterns like the ocean flows and computing mean that the new equipment could vastly improve forecasts - even though the last "super computer" was installed just three years ago. He said the cost to the taxpayer, which is likely to be tens of millions, would be justified by the gains to industries such as construction, tourism and even marquee companies. It will also help to predict the effects of climate change. "It is of great concern to us that scientific advances in weather forecasting and the associated public benefits - particularly in regard to severe weather warnings - are being held back by insufficient computing capacity," he said. We recognise that there are concerns about affordability, but a new supercomputer for the Met Office could deliver as much as a ten-to-one return on investment. With more accurate forecasting everyone becomes a winner - from the organisers of the village fete to farmers deciding when to harvest. The report also said the Met Office needs to get better at communicating the weather forecast following the confusion of the past few years. Following the "barbecue summer" furore, the Met Office dropped seasonal forecasts and announced they would be following the US and other countries by presenting the weather through a range of probabilities. Already daily and weekly forecasts that show the probability of certain weather over each postcode area are available on the internet and the scheme will be rolled out to monthly forecasts. Mr Miller said seasonal forecasts should also return, showing probability, as the public becomes more familiar with how to interpret uncertainty around weather. "When people talk about barbecue summers inevitably the way in which the data is presented to the public needs to be thought about very carefully," he said. We need a lot more information about probabilities, so that the public can understand the odds of forecasts getting it wrong.