ABSTRACT
This chapter's core claim is that environmental data in the UK and the US are increasingly treated as markets rather than as primarily public goods. Meteorology as a discipline has long had a commercial component, particularly in the US As meteorology embraced numerical modelling that required ever-faster computing power, the cost to government increased rapidly, leading to much concern to economically justify investment in meteorology especially for publicly funded offices. The Met Office was perceived to be a prime candidate for emerging Trading Fund legislation in the 1970s. In the 2000s, movements for open access data including The Guardian's Free our Data campaign put pressure on the UK government to release more data to public access. Data infrastructures do not exist merely to support commercial ends; rather they can support multiple, sometimes competing interests. Even if there is a broadly neoliberal policy infrastructure it does not translate that all users will have neoliberal motivations.
