Tackling the challenges of high-impact weather and climate can no longer be treated as a single discipline as it increasingly requires involvement from scientists in other sectors including health, technology, artificial intelligence, and the social sciences. MOAP brings together the best of UK scientific research to cover topics where the Met Office does not necessarily have acknowledged expertise.
Lee Chapman, Professor of Climate Resilience at the University of Birmingham, commented: “The new partnership coincides with the development of two institutes at Birmingham focussed on Sustainability & Climate Action and Interdisciplinary Data Science & Artificial Intelligence. We look forward to combining our international expertise in these areas with the world-leading work of the Met Office.”
There is an urgent need to understand the impacts of extreme weather and climate change and how these affect society. Temperature extremes are expected to increase in line with climate change, bringing potential impacts on health.
Gregor Leckebusch, Professor of Meteorology and Climatology at the University of Birmingham, commented: “In the future, we will see further, partly new or modified extreme events across the globe posing a substantial thread to societies. The University of Birmingham with its pioneering research across the full breadth of disciplines will help to tackle respective global challenges.”
Dr George Pankiewicz, Met Office Head of Science Partnership, commented: “A good topical example of how this programme is expected to make great advances is in the sphere of heat health. This summer saw temperature records broken across the UK and multiple heatwave events around the northern hemisphere - bringing disruption and societal impacts to many communities.
“The increasing frequency and intensity of heat events is something that humanity will have to increasingly adapt to. Scientists at the Met Office and elsewhere are building the body of research about these events, but we recognise that isn’t sufficient alone to help society rise to future challenges.”
The academic partnership unites researchers at the University of Birmingham with counterparts at UCL and the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leeds, Oxford, and Reading. The collaboration has a number of workstreams and Birmingham experts will lend their expertise to work on fusing simulations with data sciences, capturing environmental complexity, hazards to decision making, and advancing observations.
Met Office Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher commented: “Extreme weather events and climate change pose among the greatest risks facing humanity. Tackling them is an urgent and huge undertaking. The Met Office can’t do it alone – the Met Office Academic Partnership harnesses the best of UK research and will give us the best chance of coping with and adapting to future change.”
