On Monday 12th December the latest cohort of MPE CDT students visited the UK Met Office headquarters in Exeter. For most of us it was our first visit there and we were certainly impressed by being introduced with the vast variety of scientific work done in the Met Office as well as the tour around the headquarters.
The visit was part of Met Office’s annual DTP/CDT day and we were joined by students from other universities such as Oxford, Surrey and Edinburgh. The programme began with a series of four short talks outlining the work of their four main research areas, namely Weather Science, Climate Science, Foundation Science and Applied Science & Scientific Consultancy. It was followed by presentations of PhD projects that involve supervision from the Met Office. This was most relevant for students who hadn’t chosen their project, but from the presentations we also gained an understanding of research collaborations between the academia and the Met Office.
The lunch break was a great opportunity for networking, both with the Met Office scientists and students from other DTPs/CDTs. Posters were displayed at the back of the room and some researchers were present to explain their research findings to anyone interested.
In the afternoon Chief Meteorologist Edward Carroll spoke of the round-the-clock operational work of the Met Office, then three new Met Office scientists shared their experiences. The last item of the programme was a tour of the headquarters, in which it was impressive to see the super-computers running and the forecasters in the operation room working. The tour also included the labs and the publicly-accessible National Meteorological Library.
Reported by: Adrian Leung and Kevin Synnott
