Senior Climate Scientist

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We’re looking for an exceptional Senior Climate Scientist to help us make a difference to our planet.

As our Senior Climate Scientist, the job may be suitable for hybrid working, which is where an employee works part of the week in the office and part of the week from home. This is a voluntary, non-contractual arrangement and the location advertised will be your contractual place of work.

Our opportunity is full time, 37 hours per week, but we would also consider applicants wishing to work a minimum of 30 hours per week. Our people are at the heart of what we do and we'll do our best to agree a working pattern that works for everyone.

From science to technology, from meteorology to management, and from planning to communication, our expertise helps us stand out as the authority on weather accuracy and climate prediction. We help individuals, industries and government to make better decisions to stay safe and thrive. This is the Met Office. This is who we are.

• We’reaforcefor good - focusing on our environmental and social impact
• We’reexperts by nature - always learning and developing to do things better
• We live and breathe it - putting our purpose at the heart of decision-making
• We’re bettertogether - understanding partnerships and inclusivity make us greater
• We keep evolving - pushing boundaries to make tomorrow better for our customers

We’re looking for an enthusiastic and experienced Senior Climate Scientist to lead development of a new set of ‘High Impact’ climate storylines for the UK as part of our new package of UK Climate Information.

UK Climate Information (UKCI) is a high‑profile new programme to deliver National Climate information which is used by a wider range of users to explore current and future climate risk and resilience, and to inform adaptation decision making. The new package of information in UKCI will represent a step change from the existing information available through UKCP
18, drawing from the latest science opportunities to provide new types of decision‑relevant climate information. The programme of science included in UKCI includes running cutting‑edge high‑resolution model simulations as well as developing a wider range of new projections products to meet a diverse range of user needs.

Sometimes called ‘High Impact, low or unknown likelihood’ or ‘H++’, high impact storylines are used to represent plausible outcomes for the global climate that lie outside of the range of conventional projections, reflecting potential global scale events including ‘tipping points’ (including abrupt changes, irreversible changes) and enhanced warming scenarios (as a result of high climate sensitivity, carbon cycle feedbacks or unexpectedly high emissions).

These new storylines will be applied in sectors or organisations where there is high vulnerability to climate change and low risk tolerance, allowing users to undertake ‘stress tests’ against worst‑case scenarios.

• You’ll lead the design and development of a set of storylines that reflect the latest science on Earth system tipping points, enhanced warming scenarios, sea‑level and ice sheet projections to identify and analyse suitable simulations and scenarios that might underpin a set of High Impact storylines for use in risk assessment.
• You’ll build excellent working relationships with key experts in the relevant field within and beyond the Met Office to develop collaborations to ensure that the storylines reflect and synthesize the best available science and to gain ‘buy in’ from the wider science community in the development and provision of High Impact Storylines as part of UKCI.
• You’ll consider the user needs for this type of information, working together with the experts in user engagement in the wider UKCI teams and the UKCI user groups to understand more about the types of information required, the types of risk assessment or decision they might inform, and the guidance needed to help users apply the scenarios appropriately.
• You’ll prepare appropriate datasets and written materials for scientific audiences (e.g. scientific…