Download Met Office science strategy 2010–2015

Met Office science
strategy 2010–2015
Unified science and modelling for unified prediction
Integrating our research and prediction capabilities to deliver
world-leading weather and climate services
Summary
This document outlines the top-level science strategy for the
Met Office, which responds to the increasing demand for
seamless prediction systems across all timescales, from hours
to decades, and for the atmosphere, oceans and land surface.
It recognises the unique position of the Met Office in having
world-class weather forecasting and climate prediction in one
place. Exploiting the benefits of those synergies between the
science and modelling of weather, oceans and climate, lies at
the heart of this strategy.
The strategy takes the new agenda of seamless science and
prediction and focuses the Met Office research agenda
around four major science challenges: (i) forecasting
hazardous weather from hours to decades; (ii) water cycle
and quantitative precipitation forecasting on all scales; (iii)
monthly to decadal prediction in a changing climate; and (iv)
sensitivity of the Earth system to human activities.
It is advocated that an increasing emphasis on higher
resolution modelling, a focus on research into processes and
phenomena in the ocean-atmosphere-land-cryosphere system,
and an enhanced use of Earth observation are the necessary
scientific foundations for tackling these challenges. A new
research structure is therefore proposed, aimed at delivering
efficiencies and accelerating progress, and setting in place
mechanisms for greater integration and innovation in the
science base.
The strategy also considers other elements that are required
to maintain the Met Office as a world-leading scientific
organisation. These include a more strategic approach to
partnerships, both nationally and internationally, delivery
of the necessary infrastructure for research and services,
improved processes for staff recruitment and development,
and better methods for communicating and disseminating our
science.
1. Context
In the past, the separation between weather and climate
research has been essential and understandable because
numerical weather prediction was far more advanced and
sophisticated and because the science of climate prediction was
relatively immature. That is increasingly no longer the case.
With the growing appreciation of the importance of hazardous
weather in driving some of the most profound impacts of
climate variability and change, and with the developing interest
in monthly to decadal forecasts from users, there is a clear need
for a more seamless approach to modelling and prediction. At
the same time observations of the Earth system, especially from
space, are providing ever-increasing information about the
current state of the full system, essential for initialising climate
forecasts. Climate science is now sufficiently mature that
providing a structured operational delivery of climate forecasts,
to underpin a wide range of services, is a logical development.
Over the last decade or so, predicting the weather and climate
has emerged as one of the most important areas of scientific
endeavour. This is partly because the remarkable increase in
skill of current weather forecasts has made society more and
more dependent on them day to day for a whole range of
decision making. And it is partly because climate change is now
widely accepted and the realisation is growing rapidly that it
will affect every person in the world profoundly, either directly
or indirectly.
The challenge for the Met Office is to remain at the cuttingedge of modelling and predicting the evolution of the
atmosphere, oceans and fully coupled climate system. This will
provide an increasingly accurate and reliable service across all
sectors that are vulnerable to the effects of adverse weather and
climatic conditions, whether now or in the future.
Seamless forecasting services
Forecast lead-time
Observations
and past data
Day
Hour
Week
Month
Season
Year
Decade
Century
Mitigation policies
Infrastructure planning
Homeland & international security
Adaptation strategies
Regulator standards
Financial & property portfolio risk management
Climate
vulnerability
analysis
Investment strategy
Aid agencies & international development
Market trading
Maintenance planning
Scenario
planning
Insurance/re-insurance hazards
Resource planning: energy, water, food
Operations planning
Disruption planning
Weather warnings
Emergency response
Proposed seamless forecasting system and related services.
01
The Met Office is uniquely placed to deliver the proposed
seamless approach since it has world-class capabilities in
weather and climate prediction. It has a modelling system that
can span all the scales of interest from the individual cloud
to the whole globe, and one that can increasingly include all
components of the system — ocean, land, ecosystems and
ice. This means that the same science and modelling can
potentially be applied to forecasting tomorrow’s weather as
it can to predicting what the statistics of weather — especially
hazardous weather — may be like ten or 100 years from now.
One of the key strengths of the Met Office is the direct pullthrough of research into improved products and services.
Access to core scientific expertise is vital for delivering the best
service to our customers. Similarly, understanding the needs of
our customers enriches the science we do. A major factor in our
success as an organisation has been the integration of core and
applied research. As the climate changes and societies’ needs
for weather and climate information grow, it will be crucial that
we maintain that dialogue to ensure that our investment in
long-term, strategic research is made wisely.
In achieving a more unified and seamless approach, the
Met Office is likely to realise some significant advantages
and efficiencies in its science, model development and
underpinning technical capabilities. With appropriate
reorganisation to build on the synergies between weather
forecasting and climate prediction, and between core and
applied research, the Met Office will be in the best possible
position to take a world lead in weather and climate services. It
is this that has set the context for the proposed restructuring of
Met Office research and development (R&D).
2. Drivers of change
There are a number of drivers of change — both external and
internal — which make a new strategy essential for the Met
Office to deliver the best weather and climate services, most
effectively and efficiently. These drivers reflect the changing
nature of international weather and climate science and the
services that society demands, the challenges of acquiring the
levels of supercomputing needed to deliver that science, and
the undoubted funding pressures on the Met Office in the
coming years. These will require us to be more efficient and to
look beyond the Met Office for the intellectual and technical
capability and capacity that we’ll need.
In the last few years, two major factors have served to
bring about revolutions in weather forecasting and climate
prediction, and to increasingly erode the traditional
boundaries between weather and climate science.
02
The first is access to increasing computer power which has
enabled much higher resolution to be used in modelling.
For weather forecasting this has meant the ability to run
operational models at cloud system resolving scale (~1 km).
This has the potential to deliver a step change in our ability
to forecast the likelihood and location of extreme weather
events, especially heavy rainfall. The capability to run models
at very high resolution has also reinvigorated the concept of
computational laboratories for the explicit modelling of key
processes and interactions in the atmosphere, which will be
critical for improving physical parametrizations.
For climate prediction, increased computing power has meant
that it is now possible to perform simulations which represent
synoptic weather systems more accurately (~50 km) and are
closer to the global resolutions used in weather forecasting. At
the same time, the resolution of the ocean models (~1/4°) is
beginning to capture the effects of eddies and is approaching
that used in ocean forecasting.
The second factor is the realisation that we are already in the
position where some level of climate change is unavoidable
and that society will need to adapt sooner rather than later.
Even without climate change, society is increasingly vulnerable
to hazardous weather and natural climate variability. This
means that information is required not at a global scale, but
at a regional and local scale and increasingly for lead-times
of months to decades rather than for the end of the century.
At the same time, there is a growing awareness that the most
serious impacts of climate change will be felt through changes
in rainfall patterns, extremes of climate variability, and the
intensity and frequency of hazardous weather events. This
new agenda is revolutionising climate science and prediction,
and the urgency of the problem is requiring an increasingly
operational delivery of climate services. This is recognised
by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and was
addressed by the 3rd World Climate Conference (WCC-3) held
in 2009, the key outcome of which is to establish a Global
Framework for Climate Services.
Both factors, increased computing power, and the new
international agenda for seamless prediction and climate
services, make a more unified approach to weather forecasting
and climate prediction practical and desirable, and are
therefore important drivers of change in the focus and
structure of the Met Office Science Programme.
Finally, the expansion of our service provision to include the
Climate Service will mean more investment in applied research
in order to provide the new products and services. This means
there must be greater alignment of research across weather
and climate science, and continuing efforts to seek synergies
and rationalisation in the products and services we provide. All
these internal factors are drivers of change if we are to deliver
to our full potential within the likely budgetary constraints.
3. Science imperatives
Complex fluid-flows in the atmosphere and oceans are a
fundamental feature of the Earth system. They transport
energy, momentum, and material substances within and
between system components. These flows occur over a
wide range of spatial scales, and evolve over a wide range
of timescales. ‘Small’ scales of motion that are known to be
important cannot be simulated directly in global models on
current computers and must therefore be parametrized in
terms of resolved scales.
A clear imperative is to develop models of much higher
resolution so as to be able to simulate explicitly flows down to
smaller scales and to capture potential non-linear interactions
between different space and time scales, and between
different components of the Earth system. This brings further
benefits in terms of exploiting the wealth of information
in Earth observation systems through more advanced data
assimilation systems and model evaluation. It will be vital
that our modelling capability is underpinned by the ongoing
provision of weather and climate observations of sufficient
quality to initialise predictions, evaluate forecast skill and
monitor changes in the climate system.
We know that building higher resolution models is necessary
for advancing weather and climate prediction capabilities, but
increased resolution alone is not sufficient. At all resolutions,
a continuing effort to improve the parametrizations of subgrid scale processes in both the atmosphere and oceans is
an absolute imperative. This requires maintaining our skills in
combining theory, observations and modelling to understand
how the atmosphere and oceans work and how sub-grid scale
processes should be represented.
Long-term vision
for delivering local
information on
the likelihood and
characteristics of
hazardous weather
for all forecast leadtimes
N x Global predictions at
~20km with lead times of
days to years
The increasingly challenging nature of the science that
underpins our observational, modelling and prediction
activities is an important driver of change. The Met Office will
need to be in a position with its partners to drive the science
forward on many fronts in order to tackle what we regard
as the four major challenges to which the Met Office must
respond in the coming decade. All transcend the boundaries
between weather and climate science, and thus drive us
towards a more integrated approach to our research. These
can be summarised as follows.
3.1 Forecasting hazardous weather from
hours to decades
Hazardous weather covers not just intense rainfall and
damaging winds, but also heatwaves, poor air quality
and coastal impacts, such as storm surges. Whether it be
forecasting the local detail a few hours or a few days ahead,
or whether it be assessing what climate change may mean for
the frequency and intensity of such weather events in future
decades, the science that underpins our understanding and
ability to model hazardous weather will be common across all
timescales.
Improving forecasts of hazardous weather requires moving to
much higher resolution in all our models, on all timescales. In
weather forecasting from a few hours to a day or so ahead,
it means coming down to the local level so that fundamental
atmospheric processes, such as cumulus convection, and
the local landscape are represented more completely. For
coastal regions there may be real benefits from including an
interactive coastal ocean in the model.
<N x Regional
predictions at
~1km
PDF of local hazard
03
Example of a cloud system
resolving simulation showing
multi-scale organisation of clouds
and weather systems (Courtesy:
Earth Simulator Centre,
Yokohama, Japan).
Defining the initial conditions for local forecasts, how to
use more unconventional observations and develop the
observational base, such as radar and lidar, and how these
can be linked to variables within the model, all present new
challenges. At these scales, especially in convective situations,
even a forecast for a few hours ahead will need to be
probabilistic in formulation.
For forecast lead-times beyond 2–3 days, the skill of the global
forecast will be critical in setting the context for hazardous
weather. This will require continued investment in global
data assimilation research to exploit new Earth observations,
continued reduction in model biases, especially in the Tropics
and related to tropical convection, by developing improved
sub-grid scale parametrizations, and a concerted effort to
move to higher resolution both horizontally and vertically.
In climate prediction, providing robust information on the
statistics of future hazardous weather at regional and local
levels means moving to global model resolutions that capture
synoptic weather systems with greater fidelity, much as is
needed in global weather forecasting. At the same time, we
must understand more fully the weather and climate regimes
in which hazardous weather forms, such as El Niño cycles and
its global teleconnections, and extra-tropical phenomena such
as blocking and the North Atlantic Oscillation. This means that
our global weather and climate models must be more skilful
at representing weather regimes and global teleconnections.
There will continue to be a need to downscale global and
regional climate information to the local level, however much
the resolution of our prediction models improves. Again, the
expertise developed in local weather forecasting for the UK
can be carried through into informing how to downscale
regional climate predictions. The implementation of the 1.5
km UKV1 forecast model has already demonstrated a step
change in capturing extreme weather events, especially
intense rainfall. Our strategy is to bring together regional
modelling capabilities across weather and climate to exploit
the synergies and deliver benefits.
Finally, in both weather forecasting and climate prediction,
how hazardous weather translates into effects on society
requires much closer integration with the impacts community.
We are already experienced in the applied science of
translating weather forecasts into user-driven products and
services. In many cases, the same concepts and methodologies
can be taken through into the climate area, thus realising the
significant benefits of the joint presence of weather forecasting
and climate prediction within the Met Office.
Recommendations:
• To pursue an aggressive strategy of increasing model
resolution both horizontally and vertically and developing
improved parametrizations of sub-grid scale processes,
within the constraints of available computing resources.
•
To exploit more fully our capability for local weather
nowcasting and forecasting, by improving the methods
for initialising, and for performing and interpreting
probabilistic predictions with UKV model.
•
To increase our understanding of the large-scale context
of hazardous weather and to improve the ability of
global models to capture those key weather and climate
regimes.
•
To develop a joined-up approach to the applied science
of translating hazardous weather into societal impacts at
the regional and local level.
3.2 Water cycle and quantitative
precipitation forecasting
Water is a fundamental ingredient of the Earth system,
supporting plant, animal and marine life. Water vapour
constitutes the Earth’s most abundant and important
greenhouse gas, and water in its various forms (vapour,
liquid, solid) determines the characteristics and spatiotemporal evolution of the Earth system. Latent heat release
from precipitation, particularly in the Tropics, is a major
driver of the global circulation, which acts to transport heat,
moisture and momentum around the climate system. Natural
ecosystems depend on precipitation, and so water has a
fundamental role to play in other cycles of the Earth system
such as the carbon and nitrogen cycles.
The atmospheric water cycle is the driving force of weather
and climate, and the spatial and temporal characteristics of
precipitation — too much, too little, at the wrong time, in
the wrong place — have profound effects on all aspects of
life. Despite decades of research, quantitative precipitation
forecasting (QPF) remains an enormous challenge.
In mid-latitudes, rain-bearing systems are typically synoptic
or finer in scale and this presents particular constraints on the
resolution of the modelling systems we must use. Significant
advances have been achieved recently with the development
of the UKV model. This has the potential to provide better
guidance on the intensity of precipitation, especially in
situations with strong synoptic forcing, as was the case
for the Cockermouth floods in November 2009. However,
considerable research is still required on the initiation of
convective storms and on how to include the stochastic nature
1
Variable resolution regional model with 1.5km resolution over the UK.
04
of convective precipitation in the prediction system. As well as
the modelling challenges, maintaining and developing further
the observational network — especially the radar network —
will be necessary to initialise and verify model predictions.
In the Tropics, rainfall is dominated by cumulus convection,
which itself is organised on a vast range of different space
and time scales, from the diurnal cycle of individual clouds to
the planetary monsoon systems of Australasia and Africa. The
challenge of representing the multi-scale nature of tropical
convection in global models is widely recognised. This limits
our ability to forecast beyond a few days in the Tropics and
potentially compromises our global extended range and
longer term predictions.
A concerted effort to use cloud system resolving models,
combined with new satellite observations of cloud structures,
to develop new understanding of organised convection is
a central part of our strategy for tackling this key problem.
Such studies will also provide information on the multi-scale
interactions between physics and dynamics and guide the
design of stochastic-based parametrizations. These are likely
to gain in importance as the multi-scale nature of ocean and
atmospheric flows is increasingly understood.
Over the last decade or so, the definition of the global water
cycle has evolved from being just a physical system to one
that describes the combined effects of physical, biological,
biogeochemical and human processes. This system recognises
that humans interfere with the global water cycle in many
ways through, for example, the increasing extraction of
water from rivers and aquifers (more than 50% of easily
available freshwater is currently used
by humans), irrigation of crops, and
changes in land use that affect evapotranspiration and alter the nature and
seasonality of run-off.
Key issues for climate change that
hinge on the global water cycle
include: (i) the strength and variability
of global and regional hydrological
cycles in a warmer world; (ii)
freshwater forcing and salinity budget
of the global oceans; (iii) terrestrial
ecosystems and their dependence on
water availability; (iv) fate of polar
ice-caps and glaciers with consequent
sea-level rise. Water, its availability and
its quality, lies at the core of many of
the impacts of climate variability and
change, and adequate access to water
will have major implications, societally,
economically and politically, in the
coming decades.
Our goal must be to develop a more holistic approach to
understanding, modelling and predicting the global and
regional terrestrial water cycle and its role in the impacts of
hazardous weather, climate variability and climate change.
This must extend from the prediction of hydrological extremes
(floods and droughts), to an integrated assessment of water,
food and fibre.
Recommendations:
• To develop further our capability to produce and interpret
probabilistic forecasts of extreme rainfall events over the
UK with lead-times of hours to days, especially those of
convective origin.
•
To ensure that the observational network is adequate
for initialising and verifying quantitative precipitation
forecasts at the local and regional level.
•
To develop the capability to perform ultra-high resolution
process studies of convection, cloud microphysics
and precipitation processes to inform improved
parametrizations in global and regional models, and to
test these against field studies and new Earth observation
datasets.
•
To develop a more holistic approach to the terrestrial
water cycle with particular emphasis on hydrology,
the hydrological and related impacts of variations and
changes in precipitation intensity and frequency.
The global hydrological cycle
Concept of an Ensemble Prediction
System and the various sources
of uncertainty that need to be
represented.
Time
Forecast uncertainty
Initial condition
uncertainty
Analysis
Model
uncertainty
Climatology
3.3 Monthly to decadal prediction in a
changing climate
Model uncertainty arises from
stochastic, unresolved processes
and parameter uncertainty
The societal requirement for climate information is changing.
Across the UK government and the business sectors, it is
now generally accepted that the global climate is warming
and the requirement to adapt to current and unavoidable
future climate change is growing. The emphasis is towards
more regional and impacts-based predictions, with a focus
on monthly to decadal timescales. It is clear that there is an
increasing requirement for robust and more detailed science
to evaluate adaptation and planning options, and this is one
of the key drivers of our strategy to move to much higher
resolutions in our climate models. In addition, even without
global warming, society is becoming more vulnerable to
natural climate variability through increasing exposure of
populations and infrastructure, so the need for reliable
monthly to inter-annual predictions is growing, especially in
the Tropics.
We know that the frequency and intensity of drought,
flooding and heatwaves appear to be changing, and
that these extreme events are most likely to occur when
natural climate variability reinforces anthropogenic climate
change. This fact alone drives the need for initialised climate
predictions. These take into account the current phase of
natural climate variability and combine it with expected
increases in greenhouse gases to produce improved near-term
climate predictions.
In the coming decades we are going into uncharted territory
as far as the Earth’s climate is concerned; and, an important
way of building confidence in our models, and hence our
projections, is by continuously testing them in daily to
seasonal to decadal predictions. It will be crucially important
that we build effective links across the forecasts for these
different timescales and how these forecasts are then used by
various sectors.
These new challenges require a step change in the range
of climate predictions we produce and the expert advice
we give. Correspondingly, these have implications for the
scientific research that needs to be undertaken. Attaining a
seamless prediction system, as outlined earlier, which exploits
the synergies across weather and climate, will present some
new scientific challenges.
Initialised climate predictions require a definition of the
current state of the climate system, especially the oceans.
Whilst we have expertise in independent atmosphere and
ocean data assimilations, we do not yet know whether a
fully coupled data assimilation system is feasible. It is also
increasingly apparent that the upper ocean may play a key
06
Deterministic
forecast
role on timescales of hours to days, especially in the Tropics.
The question of when and how to include an interactive
ocean in global weather prediction needs to be addressed,
but potentially offers the opportunity for greater synergy
between global weather and ocean forecasting, and between
global weather and climate prediction. This would also
naturally provide a bridge between atmosphere and ocean
data assimilation, and ensure a consistent approach to
global forecast initialisation across all timescales from days to
decades.
Ensemble prediction systems (EPS) are now well established in
extended range and climate forecasting, but the techniques
to represent forecast uncertainty and sample adequately
the phase space of the forecasts are quite diverse. These
range from initial condition uncertainty (including optimal
perturbations and ensemble data assimilation), through
stochastic physics to represent the influence of unresolved
processes, to the use of perturbed parameters in the
parametrizations to represent model uncertainty. These
methods essentially address different aspects of forecast and
model uncertainty, but there is currently little understanding
of the relative importance of each for forecasts on different
lead-times. A new research activity is proposed that will bring
together the various techniques used in weather forecasting
and climate prediction to develop a seamless EPS.
Monthly to decadal prediction is still in its infancy and
the potential predictability in the climate system for these
timescales is largely unknown and probably underestimated
because of model shortcomings. A key activity must therefore
be the evaluation of model performance with a greater focus
on processes and phenomena that are fundamental for
delivering improved confidence in the predictions. Recent
research has already shown that higher horizontal and vertical
resolution has the potential to increase significantly the
predictability in parts of the world where it is currently low,
such as western Europe. At the same time, more sophisticated
measures of defining and verifying forecast skill for the
different lead-times need to be developed. These should take
account of users’ needs, and therefore stronger links must be
established between the science and the service provision.
Recommendations:
• To bring together global atmosphere and ocean data
assimilation and forecasting activities to advance the
development of more consistent coupled initialisation and
forecasting methodologies.
•
To develop a seamless Ensemble Prediction System
across timescales from days to decades, that considers all
sources of uncertainty.
Holistic approach to Earth
system modelling which includes
management options and human
responses
Physical
climate
Water
demand
Clouds
Water cycle
Permafrost
Irrigation
Damming
Human
emissions
To focus model evaluation on processes and phenomena
in the climate system which have the potential to improve
predictability, and to develop measures of forecast skill
that reflect more directly users’ needs.
3.4 Sensitivity of the Earth system to human
activities
How sensitive the Earth system will be to human activities,
both greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change, remains
hugely uncertain, particularly beyond the next few decades.
Reducing that uncertainty has to be one of the major
challenges for the Met Office in the coming years. This will
require us to accelerate the development of holistic Earth
system models so that we can assess with greater confidence
the risks of dangerous, abrupt or unexpected climate changes,
especially those associated with biogeochemical cycles.
An essential component of understanding the sensitivity
of the Earth system to human activities is through detailed
monitoring and attribution studies. We will seek to maintain
our strengths in climate monitoring and climate change
detection by engaging strongly with WMO initiatives to
produce long-term, robust climate records, and by working
actively within the GMES2 framework.
Furthermore, we need to understand whether natural weather
and climate variability may interact with global warming in
a non-linear way to produce unprecedented changes in the
Earth system. The attribution of current changes in climate,
and increasingly in the Earth system, will require us to draw
on the best modelling and statistical methodologies. The
attribution of extreme events to global warming will grow
in importance for decision-making around mitigation and
adaptation and it will be essential that we provide the best
possible advice. So, just as increasing model resolution must
be a goal for weather forecasting and monthly to decadal
climate prediction, it must also be an essential part of our
research on Earth system processes and feedbacks.
Reducing uncertainties in model climate sensitivity, especially
related to clouds, still needs more research. But the prospects
for progress are good, with new satellite observations and
process-based modelling. On the other hand, potentially
unexpected and rapid changes, which could lead to an
acceleration of global warming and much more extreme
impacts, are major causes for concern. These include the
response of the water, carbon and nitrogen cycles, the
Greenhouse
gases
Impacts
of climate
change
Carbon cycle
Fires
Dust
Aerosols
•
Urbanisation
Organic
compounds
Chemistry
Deforestation
Ecosystems
Agriculture
Forestry
behaviour of ice in the climate system — collapse of major
ice-sheets, loss of Arctic sea-ice and melting permafrost
— and the potential for massive releases of methane from
ocean hydrates. Much of the science behind these is still very
immature and tackling them will require a multi-disciplinary
approach that must reach far beyond the Met Office. Our
unique role is the capability to bring this multi-disciplinary
science together within the holistic Earth system model so that
the full range of interactions and feedbacks can be explored.
As our knowledge and understanding of the full Earth system
develops, we will need to continually reassess what constitutes
dangerous climate change, where and for whom, and what
new mitigation policies may mean for emissions, atmospheric
composition and longer term climate change. Avoiding
dangerous climate change will require a much more detailed
examination of regional impacts and management options,
which must include socio-economic dependencies. We will
therefore seek to transform the Earth system model into an
Integrated Assessment System by working with key socioeconomic groups in the UK. Furthermore, radical solutions
to global warming using geo-engineering must be properly
assessed and that can only be done using full Earth system
and integrated assessment models.
Recommendations:
• To pursue an ambitious programme of research and
development with our partners to deliver a world-leading,
holistic Earth system model.
•
To engage in international efforts to monitor the Earth
system and to detect possible changes.
•
To understand the influence of natural weather and
climate variability on Earth system processes and
feedbacks, and to assess the importance of model
resolution.
•
To develop robust methods for attributing changes in
climate, especially related to hazardous weather and
climate extremes, by combining observations and models
of the Earth system.
•
To extend the Earth system model to include socioeconomics, so that integrated cost/benefit analyses of
mitigation policies for avoiding dangerous climate change
can be made.
•
To reduce the uncertainty and to provide more confident
assessments of the range of climate sensitivities to human
activities.
2
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (www.gmes.info) is
the European Initiative for the establishment of a European capacity
for Earth Observation.
07
4. A new structure
for delivering Met
Office research and
development:
A key part of this strategy is the restructuring of Met Office
Research and Development (R&D) to ensure that the Met
Office is best placed to tackle new challenges, and to be fit for
purpose to deliver the products and services that customers
will require 5–10 years from now, especially as climate change
begins to bite.
An imperative for any new structure is that it must continue to
ensure the world-leading status of the Met Office in Numerical
Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate change research and
prediction. Furthermore, it must recognise that the longterm health and viability of the Met Office as a world-leading
service will depend on maintaining a cutting-edge science
base in-house across all key areas. It is only by having that
core of expertise that we will be able to engage effectively
with our partners.
The previous sections have developed the arguments around
the drivers and imperatives for a more unified approach to
delivering our science and predictions. The proposed new
structure endeavours to keep the best of the existing R&D
structure whilst moving towards this greater unification
in the science and modelling where appropriate. It is also
aimed at providing greater opportunities for integration and
innovation, offering a distinct role for the Met Office Fellows
and Expert Scientists. It is anticipated that the proposed
structure may be part of the transition to an increasingly
unified science programme, as areas of science mature and
new priorities for research emerge.
For many reasons — scientific, technical and customer-based
— maintaining clearly identifiable programmes in weather
and climate research is regarded as essential in the short-term.
Also, the current division of research across the major strategic
areas is still fit for purpose so there are no reasons to make
substantial changes. However, there are clear imperatives for
improving integration across the existing R&D programmes
for the reasons stated above. It is proposed that this is
achieved in three ways:
08
(i) Bringing together all R&D under a single Director of
Science. The Director of Science will deliver an integrated
science programme supported by Deputy Directors in
Weather, Climate and Foundation Science and by the Heads
of Science Partnerships and Integration and Innovation. The
proposed new structure is shown below and the various
strategic areas that fall within the three science areas are
given in the accompanying table. The Director of Science
will also be supported by the Head of Science Programme
Administration, who will be responsible for all human
resources as well as the project and financial management
of the whole programme, working with the Directorate
Programme Coordinators. This structure should enable
greater flow of resource between the three elements of
the programme, as and when required by the science and
services.
(ii) Forming a new directorate in Foundation Science.
This will bring together those elements of R&D which are
fundamental to Met Office excellence across weather and
climate prediction. This will require some rationalisation and
reorganisation within existing groupings. A new group in
Global Unified Model (UM) Development and Evaluation is
proposed. This will deliver the required integration in UM
structure, development and evaluation more efficiently and
effectively. The intention is that this new grouping will deliver
benefits across the programme, and it is anticipated that
other new groupings will enter Foundation Science as the
programme develops.
(iii) Establishing a programme of integrating and
innovating activities. The elements of this programme will
evolve with time and will cover initially those areas of research
that currently do not function effectively, as well as new
and emerging areas of science that are more innovative and
strategic. As specific areas mature, they will be taken through
into the appropriate Directorate and new topics will be
identified and implemented. The Met Office Research Fellows
and Expert Scientists are expected to play a major role in the
development and delivery of this programme. Staff will be
drawn from the three Research Directorates to contribute to
the chosen activities as and when required. Initial areas where
investment will be made include: coupled data assimilation,
land-surface modelling, seamless ensemble prediction
systems, atmospheric composition and air quality.
Head, Integration
and Innovation
Chief Scientist
Director of
Science
Head, Science
Partnerships
Head, Science Programme
Administration
Deputy Director,
Climate Science
Head, Met Office
Hadley Centre
Deputy Director,
Weather Science
Deputy Director,
Foundation Science
The Met Office Science Directorate
The management group for the Met Office Science
Programme will consist of the Director of Science with the
three Deputy Directors and two Heads of Programmes. The
Met Office Science Advisory Committee (MOSAC) will be
expanded to cover all aspects of science and will provide
advice to the Director of Science on the strategic development
of the Met Office Science Programme. As happens now, the
Chair of MOSAC will report to the Met Office Board. Existing
Science Review Groups (SRGs) for reviewing specific areas
(e.g. Met Office Hadley Centre Science Review Group) will
continue for as long as required by the relevant Customer
Groups. The Chairs of those groups will also be members of
MOSAC to ensure continuity.
The strategic science areas covered by each of the Directorates
are outlined below. These reflect the core areas of research
that the Met Office must continue to invest in, if it is to
provide the range of services across weather and climate that
society will increasingly need. There are nevertheless synergies
between the core areas in all three Directorates (e.g. between
Climate Monitoring & Attribution and Satellite Applications,
between Ocean Forecasting and Oceans, Cryosphere &
Dangerous Climate Change). One of the principal aims of
the new structure is to ensure that these are recognised
and exploited to their full capacity. The intention is that this
structure will also enable us to prioritise areas of research
so that we continue to deliver the best possible Science
Programme when resources are limited.
Strategic science areas within each Directorate
Climate Science
Foundation Science
Weather Science
Understanding
Climate Change
Observational Based
Research
Operational Weather
Forecasting and IT
Climate Monitoring
and Attribution
Atmospheric Processes
and Parametizations
Satellite Applications
Monthly to Decadal
Variability and Prediction
Global UM Development
and Evaluation
Data Assimilation
and Ensembles
Oceans, Cryosphere and
Dangerous Climate Change
Dynamics Research
(and Scalable Codes)
Ocean Forecasting
Earth System Science
and Mitigation studies
Customer Applications
Climate Impacts and
Adaptation Studies
09
5. Collaboration:
building stronger
partnerships
Until recently, the science of weather and climate has largely
been the domain of physicists and mathematicians, but
increasingly we need to engage with many other disciplines,
from chemistry and biology to geography, engineering and
social science. The evolution to a truly interdisciplinary science
will pose new challenges but also new opportunities.
At the same time, the modelling, prediction and computing
challenges have grown, especially as we look towards
higher resolution models and seamless prediction systems.
Collaboration will be essential for delivering the capability
that we will require in the coming decade if we are to deliver
a world-class weather and climate service. There is also
no doubt that engaging with the users of our predictions
raises many new and exciting science questions, so the
right structures will need to be put in place to facilitate that
knowledge exchange.
It is with this backdrop that the Met Office has embraced its
role as an integrator and facilitator of weather and climate
modelling, research and prediction, and now places building
stronger partnerships at the core of its science strategy.
We have already actively pursued the provision of the UM
system to national and international organisations, and we
are beginning to reap the benefits of those partnerships. We
have worked with the Natural Environment Research Council
(NERC) to establish the Joint Weather and Climate Research
Programme, a development of real strategic importance. We
increasingly see ourselves playing a key role in the crossGovernment, cross-Research Council programme on Living
with Environmental Change (LWEC), both in research and in
delivery.
These activities need to be strengthened and extended as the
demands of the science grow, and the challenge of acquiring
and maintaining the right level of research infrastructure,
especially supercomputing, is to be answered.
10
We propose therefore to establish a new group under
a Head of Science Partnerships that will coordinate and
develop the expanding range of collaborative activities.
These activities will include:
(i)
Bringing a more structured approach to our partnerships with international UM users by: (i) agreeing joint research plans and sharing research and development activities; (ii) developing more effective mechanisms for exchanging code and results;
(iii) considering how the computing demands of seamless ensemble prediction can be shared.
(ii)Strengthening and extending the Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme with NERC to: (i) encompass the major elements of joint ownership of national capability which are critical for the UK science base (specifically, model codes, research supercomputing and major observational platforms); and (ii) facilitate greater alignment of directed research and major research initiatives to ensure maximum benefits and efficiency.
(iii)Developing a more effective relationship with the Research Councils and the LWEC programme to ensure that our national capability in the science, modelling and prediction of the weather, oceans and climate is used to maximum effect, and that opportunities exist for the Met Office to lead or participate in LWEC and related programmes where appropriate.
(iv)Establishing the Met Office Academic Partnership Scheme as an effective interface between academic research, training and career development, and the delivery of user-driven products and services. This major initiative will set in place formal arrangements with leading universities for collaboration on key areas of science of common interest to both organisations. It will facilitate exchange fellowships and sabbaticals, sponsor undergraduate and PhD prizes, internships and studentships, for example by focusing the existing CASE award scheme on areas of strategic importance, and contributing to the education, training and career development of young researchers in both institutions. The intention is for staff to move more freely between the Met Office and academia to deliver improved levels of knowledge exchange.
(v)Establishing the Met Office Industrial Fellowship Scheme with key customers, sectors and companies, to create opportunities for staff from customer organisations (including Government departments) to spend time in the Met Office and vice versa. This will instil a greater level of understanding of customers’ needs and of the Met Office’s capabilities to deliver those needs. The potential for the Technology Strategy Board to facilitate this scheme will be explored in collaboration with the Research Councils.
6. Recruitment and staff 7. Research
development
infrastructure
The success of the Met Office as a world-leading scientific
institution relies on the quality and commitment of its staff,
and therefore on recruiting and retaining the best scientists.
This is already challenging with the rapid growth in job
opportunities in environmental science in both the academic
and private sectors. Presenting the Met Office as an exciting
and vibrant research environment with opportunities to
participate in a wide range of cutting-edge science must be
part of our strategy for attracting and retaining the best.
Better communication of our research through the web and
other media will be essential.
We will need to be even more targeted in our recruitment
of the best science graduates. Alongside the Academic
Partnership Scheme outlined above, other mechanisms for
linking with leading universities will be considered. This could
include structured vacation training and work experience
programmes, undergraduate ‘industrial’ scholarships and
prizes. Our use of CASE awards to PhD students should be
targeted at the best candidates.
In order to retain and develop our scientists, we must offer
more opportunities for advancement, for self-development,
creativity and innovation. We should seek to give our best
scientists in the order of 20% of their time to pursue their
personal research ideas and for this to be recognised within
the staff review process. Sabbaticals and exchange visits with
our academic and industrial partners should be encouraged as
part of this scheme. We should also ensure that our mentoring
of young scientists is of the highest quality and that they are
more fully engaged in programme planning and the wider
research of the Met Office.
The proposed restructuring of Met Office R&D should
enable more opportunities for advancement and leadership,
especially through the new programme on Integration and
Innovation. It is anticipated that the Expert Scientist and
Research Fellow roles will provide greater opportunities
for research leadership internally and externally, and will
increasingly be focused on delivering the Science Strategy.
Recommendations:
• Seek ways to present the Met Office as a vibrant
and exciting science organisation with wide-ranging
opportunities for research.
•
Extend the targeting of our recruitment at the best
graduates through a range of mechanisms, including
formal partnerships with leading universities.
•
Provide more opportunities for Continuing Professional
Development and for career progression within the
organisation.
Addressing the four major science challenges that underpin
the delivery of the best possible weather and climate
services, will need sustained access to a world-class research
infrastructure, especially modelling and software engineering,
supercomputing hardware and observational platforms. Some
of these can be delivered in partnership, especially with NERC,
but it has to be recognised that these are the bedrock of our
science programme and that without them the Met Office
will not be in a position, 5–10 years from now, to deliver the
products, services and advice that society will need.
7.1 Modelling
Modelling underpins everything we do — from research to
operations and services. Our weather and climate model
codes are increasingly complex and computationally
demanding as well as being technically challenging to
maintain. So, alongside the ongoing investment in computing
hardware, there is an urgent need to develop a much
stronger capability in computational science and software
development.
In the coming years we must tackle the technological
challenges of exploiting petascale computing. Next
generation machines will be based on multi-core, massively
parallel architectures and all model codes, not just those of
the Met Office, will need to be rewritten to scale across many
thousands of processors. This is an urgent problem which
will need dedicated resources to tackle it and will affect all
areas of our research and delivery. At the same time, we will
need to develop innovative ways to analyse and visualise the
massive datasets that we produce. Both issues will require
us to nurture and grow a new generation of weather and
climate scientists who are expert in both the science and
computational methods.
Currently, computational science and software engineering
are under-resourced in the Met Office, with the effect
that scientists spend a disproportionate amount of time
on technical problems. Mechanisms to bring together the
computational science and Information Technology (IT)
support within the Science Programme must be pursued. At
the same time, we will need to find other avenues to acquire
the expertise and support that we need, particularly through
our partner organisations such as NERC, and through leading
IT companies. Forming new strategic alliances with centres
of excellence in computational science should be part of our
strategy.
11
Joint Met Office and NERC
Facility for Airborne Atmospheric
Measurements.
7.2 Supercomputing
It has been recognised for some time that the science of
weather and climate is ahead of the availability of computing
power, and that more skilful and confident predictions on all
timescales could be delivered if more computing power was
available. A key element of this strategy must therefore be to
make the case, scientifically and operationally, for substantially
increased resources.
The difference between operational and research computing
requirements needs to be recognised. Operational delivery
requires the appropriate capacity to deliver a suite of
weather forecasts on a 24-hour, 7-day a week basis, without
interruption. Increasingly it will also need to accommodate
an operational suite of climate predictions. Consequently,
operational supercomputing needs to be robust and under
our control, and it needs a substantial partition for preoperational development and testing. We will increasingly
need to develop strong economic arguments for the
continuing investment by Government in operational
supercomputing.
Research, on the other hand, requires access to advanced
computing capability in order to make further progress
in model resolution and complexity, data assimilation and
process-based research. The delivery of this capability can
be different from the operational system and could involve
national (such as extending the current joint partition of the
Met Office machine with NERC) or international partnering
arrangements. Our strategy should be to play a leading role in
the development of national, European and/or international
initiatives for research supercomputing, and being prepared
to consider a range of funding models, including business
investment.
12
7.3 Observational platforms and
instrumentation
Advancing our models and predictive capabilities relies
heavily on better understanding of atmospheric processes and
interactions. Retaining a strong capability in observationally
based research will be crucial from now onwards, to provide
the underpinning science for the four major challenges
outlined earlier. The UK Facility for Airborne Atmospheric
Measurements (FAAM) provides us with access to a highly
instrumented research aircraft which allows us to play a worldleading role in atmospheric science and to engage in major
international field experiments. Without those opportunities
the future development of our models, particular at the local
and regional level, would be weakened substantially.
This facility is operated jointly with NERC and this partnership
provides many benefits scientifically which we should seek to
maintain and grow. It also provides an important platform for
customer-driven applications and can be deployed rapidly in
environmental emergencies. Retaining this national capability
must continue to be a high priority for the Met Office. We
should seek to do this in collaboration with NERC through the
Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme.
In addition to the research aircraft, ground-based
observational sites will continue to be important for
atmospheric research and we should seek a stronger
collaboration with NERC in developing and maintaining at
least one highly instrumented site in the UK.
The development of new instrumentation for observing the
atmosphere should also be part of the Met Office Science
Strategy from now onwards. As our modelling and predictive
capabilities at regional and local levels grow, it will be
essential that the observational base keeps pace with those
developments, in terms of both research and operations.
Collaboration with the academic community and the
instrument providers on metrology and the development of
prototype instruments needs to be developed further as a core
part of our strategy.
EUMETSAT Third Generation Weather Satellite (left) and
ESA’s EarthCare mission (right).
7.4 Space-borne Earth Observation
Earth observation from space will play an increasingly
important role in all areas of the Science Programme. It
underpins our weather forecasting and will more and more
define our climate monitoring, attribution and prediction
activities. It will be essential, therefore, that ongoing
commitments to invest in weather and climate observing
systems are secured internationally. We will continue to use
our expertise in the science applications of Earth observation
to help steer the future priorities of the EUMETSAT and ESA
The focus of our Earth observation activities has traditionally
been on the physical variables of the atmosphere, such as
temperature, humidity and winds. These data are crucial to
our weather forecasting capabilities and currently give us
an additional 12 hours of skill in the northern hemisphere
and as much as 48 hours in the southern hemisphere. As
the information content of satellite observations increases,
with the development of high resolution, multi-spectral
measurements, there must be a sustained effort in developing
more sophisticated retrieval algorithms and data assimilation
techniques, so that these observations can be exploited fully.
Recommendations:
• To develop a stronger base in computational science to
tackle the challenges of next generation, scalable models,
and of analysing and visualising weather and climate data.
•
To make a strong case for enhanced investment in
supercomputing at the national level to support
operational delivery across weather and climate
prediction.
•
To engage proactively in European and international
initiatives for access to petascale/exascale supercomputing
capability to enable cutting-edge research.
•
To develop a joint strategy with NERC to sustain our
world-class capabilities in observational platforms.
•
To facilitate the development of new instrumentation to
enhance our operational observational capabilities in the
UK.
•
To continue to invest in the exploitation of Earth
observation data and to engage actively in setting
priorities for future investment in space-borne
measurements.
Moreover, the Met Office will increasingly need to consider
satellite measurements of other components of the Earth
system such as cloud vertical structure, atmospheric
composition (including dust, aerosols and greenhouse gas
concentrations), oceanography, hydrology and ecosystems.
These data are essential for model development and
evaluation as well as for providing the range of products
and services that society will require. This is challenging
research. Collaboration with leading groups in the UK and
Europe — especially through the GMES programme and ESA’s
International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell — will be
essential.
13
8. International
leadership
A key element of this strategy is to maintain the Met Office
amongst the leading weather and climate science institutes in
the world, and to position it as the world-leader in the delivery
of a seamless prediction service from weather forecasting for a
few hours ahead to climate prediction out to decades.
As weather and climate prediction becomes increasingly
complex, the number of viable systems around the world
is likely to decline. Our strategy of working with national
met. services and offering the Unified Model system should
be strengthened. We should take an increasingly strong
role internationally in capacity building, especially in those
countries that cannot sustain their own research and
predictive capabilities. This is a key part of our strategy in
developing the UK Climate Service so that it has global reach.
International collaboration and engagement in major
international initiatives is an essential part of maintaining
a vibrant research programme and securing our worldclass status. We will continue in our proactive engagement
with WMO research activities, especially through the World
Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the World Climate
Research Programme (WCRP), by ensuring that the Met Office
is represented on the relevant committees and by offering
leadership in areas where we have specific expertise. Over
the years, the Met Office has made major contribution to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), providing
many Lead and Contributing Authors to the Assessment
Reports. We will continue to do so, as well as contributing
to the shaping of the future structure of the Reports as the
demands on climate change prediction grow.
Within Europe, the rapidly emerging interests in climate
services are likely to have a major impact on the structure
of European climate science, modelling and prediction. Our
strategy is to engage fully with the opportunities that will
arise within the future EU Framework Programmes and seek
to provide leadership, as we did through the FP6 ENSEMBLES
Programme, whilst preserving our national capability.
Recommendations:
• To grow the international use of the UM system as the
‘model of choice’ in a structured way that benefits the
Met Office.
•
To engage proactively in international research
organisations especially the WWRP and WCRP.
•
To seek a greater leadership role in European weather and
climate science and prediction activities.
14
9. Communicating our
science and positioning
the Met Office within the
UK science base
An overarching imperative of the new Science Strategy is to
promote the Met Office as a major scientific organisation
at the forefront of weather and climate research, and as an
international leader in weather and climate prediction and
services. Whilst our science credentials are known by our
peers, there are clear requirements for communicating our
science capabilities more widely, in part as our response for
the call for more openness and transparency in research,
methods and data.
The new research pages of the website will be developed
further to provide increasing visibility of our science, not
only to fellow researchers but to our stakeholders, customers
and the general public. Other methods for communicating
our science will be developed using a range of media and
drawing on external consultants. As part of the professional
development of the science staff, training in science
communication will be strengthened. There will be a major
effort to improve our visualisation tools as an aid to better
communication.
As part of our wider strategy to secure the future of the
Met Office, the key role that the Met Office plays in the UK
science base will be established more firmly. Securing and
promoting the position of the Met Office as a world-leading
science organisation pervades every aspect of this Science
Strategy. We will continue to engage proactively with the
Chief Scientific Advisors across Government departments, and
to seek better and more constructive opportunities to work
with the Research Councils in ways that reflect our scientific
capabilities.
10. Conclusions
This new Science Strategy reflects the changing priorities for
weather and climate research, modelling and prediction, and
seeks to set in place new structures that will enable the Met
Office Science Programme to be more flexible in the future
in response to the challenges of sustainable funding and
the internationalisation of weather and climate prediction
and services. Through the proposed restructuring, through
the focusing of the programme around four major science
challenges, and with an increasing emphasis on research
partnerships, this Strategy seeks to secure the position of
the Met Office as a world-leading scientific organisation. By
so doing, this will ensure that we continue to provide an
increasingly accurate and reliable service across all sectors that
are vulnerable to the effects of adverse weather, ocean and
climatic conditions, whether now or in the future.
15
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