Climate adaptation senior scientist

Background information

Businesses and governments are now increasingly aware of the need to understand the risks and opportunities that climate change and variability poses to their interests, in order to inform suitable adaptation strategies.

The Climate Impacts team in the Met Office Hadley Centre has grown rapidly over the last few years in response to the increase in demand for research and consultancy on climate risks. The team provides scientific advice and guidance to a wide range of customers including DECC, DEFRA and the energy, transport and water industries. Staff working in climate impacts and adaptation research and consultancy will work with world leading Met Office research scientists to understand current and potential capability. They will develop and apply the most up to date and relevant science to customer-focussed projects, and develop techniques and tools to quantify and communicate climate risks to the diverse customer base.

Specific job purpose

To develop and apply innovative scientific techniques and tools for analysing and communicating risks and impacts of climate change to a wide range of customers.

Specific job responsibilities

• Develop the application of suitable techniques for analysing and quantifying the impacts and associated risks of climate change.
• Work with the wider Met Office team to understand current and future Met Office capabilities and identify and support capability development to address identified customer requirements.
• Produce project reports for customers and contribute to the publication of scientific papers based on the project outputs (as applicable).
• Represent the Met Office at customer meetings, scientific conferences, seminars etc where the science of climate change, impacts and adaptation need to be presented, discussed and explored.
• Support members of the team to enhance scientific and technical capability and understanding of customer requirements.

Qualifications, skills and abilities required

Essential

• Significant relevant post-doctoral research or equivalent experience, with a degree in physical science, maths or statistics.
• An ability to lead the delivery of concurrent research projects to strict deadlines and often at short notice.
• At least one of the following:
- expertise in undertaking statistical analysis of extreme events
- industry specific experience - in particular in Utilities or Renewables sector.
• Experience of extracting, analysing, validating and interpreting large complex datasets in a scientifically appropriate manner.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate science to fellow scientists and also non-specialists and ability to build sound working relationships with colleagues and customers.
• Experience of linux working environment and working knowledge of programming in at least one of the following: IDL, R, Matlab, Fortran, Python, C.
• Demonstrated ability to listen actively, discuss and understand the needs of scientific and non-scientific customers and propose scientific work packages to address those needs.

Desirable

• Experience of delivering presentations at international conferences or to customers.
• An understanding of the current state-of-the-art in climate model projections and their strengths and limitations.

Additional supplementary information

Willingness to travel both within the UK and overseas, potentially for extended periods.

If the successful candidate is currently in a role in the Met Office scientific framework, they will ordinarily remain in the role to which they are currently mapped.