Senior Climate Adaptation Scientist

Generic role: Senior Scientist

Profession: Science and Engineering

Permanent, Full time at Met Office, Exeter

Closing date for applications: 24 February 2012

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. We provide 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-focused projects, and develop techniques and tools to quantify and communicate climate risks to our diverse customer base.

Specific job purpose

To lead the development and application 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

• Devise and lead the application of suitable techniques for analysing the risks and associated impacts of climate variability and change.
• Work with the wider Met Office team to understand current and future Met Office capabilities and identify and lead capability development to address customer requirements.
• Produce project reports for customers and lead the publication of scientific papers based on the project outputs (as applicable).
• Represent the Met Office at customer meetings, scientific conferences, seminars, expert working groups etc on aspects of climate science, risks, vulnerabilities, impacts and adaptations.
• Train and support members of the team to enhance scientific and technical capability and understanding of customer requirements.

Qualifications, skills and abilities required

Essential

• A PhD or equivalent in a natural science subject, maths or statistics.
• Evidence of insight and independence in climate science and/or its application, including a strong track record of peer-reviewed publications or equivalent level consultancy reports.
• Strong evidence of drive and commitment to focus on timely delivery of high quality output through effective resource planning, prioritisation and creation of solutions to obstacles.
• Strong experience of extracting, analysing, validating and interpreting climate model output in a scientifically appropriate manner, including an understanding of the current state-of-the-art in model projections and their strengths and limitations.
• A proven ability to take leadership roles with responsibility for innovative or complex scientific work, representing an organisation externally, and influencing scientific strategy.
• Good interpersonal skills. Strong evidence of ability to communicate and build working relationships with team members and wider colleagues and customers in own and other institutions.
• Very good working knowledge of programming in at least one of the following: IDL, R, Matlab, Fortran, Python, C.

Desirable

• Demonstrated ability to actively listen, discuss and understand the needs of scientific and non-scientific customers, relate these to scientific work which can be carried out and inform wider strategy.
• Experience of delivering presentations at international conferences or to major customers.
• Willingness to travel both within the UK and overseas.
• Strong skills in statistics and data manipulation. Time series analysis is a particular focus but other areas of statistics are also of high importance.
• Strong experience of using impacts models driven by climate model output and/or observational data.
• Strong experience of developing GIS products and/or web applications.
• Strong evidence and demonstrated interest in the development of tools for analysing and/or communicating complex information.

Additional supplementary information

We may make several appointments within this role. All Essential Criteria and Desirable Criteria 1,2 and 3 apply to all positions. Desirable Criteria 4,5,6 and 7 are not all necessary for individual positions

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.

Application forms and further information

Please mark your request or returned application form: Senior Climate Adaptation Scientist 002321 R