Results of public opinion survey

3 August 2011

The Hong Kong Observatory commissions an independent consultant to conduct public opinion surveys twice a year to gauge the public perception of the accuracy of weather forecasts and warnings and the level of public satisfaction with its overall service.

The results of the latest survey conducted in April this year indicated that on the average, the public considered 79.1% of the weather forecasts issued by the Observatory were accurate (Figure 1) and gave a score of 7.8 (out of 10) to its overall service (Figure 2). These are comparable to results in the past few years.

Regarding the accuracy of tropical cyclone warning services, about 96% of the respondents considered that the services nowadays are better or about the same as compared with past few years.

As for public access of weather information, television and radio remain the most popular channels (Figure 3). The use of Observatory's website and smartphone apps to obtain weather information has a growing trend recently, surpassing that of newspaper as indicated in the latest couple of surveys.