A climate lead with world-class tech
Everything the Met Office does is based on world-leading science and enhanced by the close working relationships we have with partner organisations around the globe. For example, The Met Office Academic Partnership is a cluster of research excellence that brings together the Met Office and institutions who are among the leading UK Universities in weather and climate science (UCL, University of Bristol, University of Exeter, University of Leeds, University of Oxford and University of Reading) through a formal collaboration to advance the science and skill of weather and climate prediction. Another example is The Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP programme) which is developing a global network of partnerships that harness the weather and climate scientific expertise of UK and partner countries to strengthen the weather and climate resilience of vulnerable communities around the world.
Key highlights
- Right across the world, every single day, people make decisions based on the weather. The Met Office provide weather and climate forecasts that help people and organisations make these decisions, stay safe, well and prosperous.
- The Met Office collect and make sense of massive amounts of data every day, using cutting-edge technology for the benefit of mankind – and our planet.
- The Met Office Hadley Centre, established in 1990, is one of the UK’s foremost climate change research centres. Our research has many purposes, including:
- Monitoring changes to the climate
- Determining the cause of these changes
- Developing services with end-users to find effective approaches to manage climate risk
- Met Office Hadley Centre research has to span an ever-increasing range of science disciplines - from fundamental atmospheric physics to ecosystem behaviour.
- Our scientists have worked with international researchers from over 1,700 institutions across 138 countries.
The Met Office Academic Partnership collaboration is the bedrock of research and science flourishes from the free and open exchange of ideas and capabilities. The formation of the MOAP was the first time that a group of leading Universities has joined forces with a leading Government Research and Service organisation to form a cluster of research excellence aimed at accelerating scientific research and its pull-through into societal benefits.
The Partnership is about the Met Office reaching out to ‘blue skies’ research, working with the leading universities on major research initiatives and growing the next generation of scientists.
Latest news
The Met Office has signed a multimillion-pound agreement with Microsoft for the provision of a world-leading supercomputing capability that will take weather and climate forecasting to the next level and help the UK stay safe and thrive, announced today on Earth Day (22 April).
This new supercomputer – expected to be the world’s most advanced dedicated to weather and climate – will be in the top 25 supercomputers in the world and be twice as powerful as any other in the UK.
The data it generates will be used to provide more accurate warnings of severe weather, helping to build resilience and protect the UK population, businesses and infrastructure from the impacts of increasingly extreme storms, floods and snow.
It will also be used to take forward ground-breaking climate change modelling, unleashing the full potential of the Met Office’s global expertise in climate science. The precision and accuracy of its modelling will help to inform Government policy as part of the UK’s fight against climate change, and its efforts to reach net zero by 2050.