Delivering the Met Office Research & Innovation Strategy through UK Science Partnerships

As our ability to better understand and predict future weather and climate develops, so too do the expectations of our customers and stakeholders. The Met Office’s Research and Innovation Strategy 2020-2030 (R&I strategy) has identified a number of Research and Innovation themes to help with these evolving demands, and is structured into three core activities: pioneering research, foundational capability and science to services. The Met Office doesn’t have all the skills or resources needed to deliver the R&I strategy, so together with research organisations across the UK, Science Partnerships are needed to undertake joint research aimed at delivering the strategy.

These Science Partnerships aren’t new. A close collaboration with the University of Reading started in the 1980s, and in the late 2000s, a Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme had been established with the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centres, shortly followed by the growth of the Met Office Academic Partnership, which now includes the Universities of Reading, Exeter, Leeds, Oxford, Bristol and University College London.

However, as the customer and stakeholder demands and the R&I strategy change, the Partnerships need to evolve. The R&I strategy can be considered a blueprint needed to meet this challenge, and now includes themes such as fusing simulation with data sciences; technology architecture and innovation; and hazard to decision making, all of which involve disciplines outside the scope of traditional weather and climate services.

Indeed, the last 2 years has seen a new Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence established with the University of Exeter to help fill gaps around data science. The Met Office is currently in discussion with NERC Centres around a new UK National Climate Science Partnership, to co-ordinate the national capability in climate science needed to inform climate solutions across society, to help build resilience and adapt to the challenges of the coming decades.

This contribution to the session will provide further detail of the Met Office’s R&I strategy, an overview of the Met Office UK Science Partnerships, the practicalities of developing successful Science Partnerships, and lessons learned. In depth examples can provided where research has translated into operations, such as the GungHo dynamical core developed with our Academic Partners, NERC and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) as part of the Met Office’s Next Generation Modelling Systems, and how the UK Earth System Modelling project (jointly funded with NERC) contributed to the 6^th Climate Model Intercomparison Project, CMIP6.