Achievements and Challenges in Weather Forecasting

Advances in weather modelling have been driven as much by technological development as by improvements in weather science. The most notable of these are the rapid increases in supercomputer power and improvements in Earth observations from space. Rapidly improving modelling capability enabled by this technology has led to 3-day weather forecasts today being as accurate as 1-day forecasts were 20 years ago.

Dr Vicky Pope (Girton) will outline some of these improvements and where further improvements are still needed. Vicky is an honorary Professor at the Science Technology Engineering and Public Policy Institute at University College London. She had a long and varied career in the Met Office. She worked for many years on climate change. She led the development of some of the best climate models in the world and later ran the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme, acting as the interface between scientists and government and other key stakeholders including the media.