Climate adaptation foundation 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 apply and contribute to the development of 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.
• Contribute to project reports for customers and 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.

Qualifications, skills and abilities required

Essential

• A good background in physical science or maths to at least degree level (2:1 or above).
• Evidence of enthusiasm for a career in consultancy / applied research.
• Ability to learn new scientific and technical skills readily and apply them in response to customer requirements.
• Demonstrated drive to timely delivery of high quality output through effective planning and creation of solutions to obstacles.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate science both to specialists and non-specialists.
• Evidence of ability to build sound working relationships with wider colleagues.
• Experience in software tools and/or programming languages.
• Experience of extracting, analysing, interpreting, and displaying datasets.

Desirable

• 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.
• Experience of delivering presentations at international conferences or to customers.
• Good understanding of current and emerging climate science.
• Peer-reviewed publications or equivalent level customer reports.
• Evidence of use of statistics in a research context.

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.