An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Carlo Buontempo

Advising decision-makers on how to build their capacities to deal with their climate risk profile.

Areas of expertise

  • Post processing climate data
  • Regional climate modelling
  • Tropical cyclones
  • Remote sensing

Publications by Carlo Buontempo

Current activities

Carlo leads the climate adaptation team at the Met Office Hadley Centre. His team develops new tools to help companies and policy-makers managing their climate risk profile. Carlo has an extensive experience in generating regional climate scenarios using regional climate modelling. He has been the main scientific contributor to a number of projects and programs involving climate change adaptation in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

  • 2010: Carlo coordinated the scientific contribution of the Met Office in a collaborative project which was looking at climate change security implication for the Sahel. The results were presented at a side event at UNFCCC COP15.
  • 2009: Carlo was responsible for the Met Office participation into the Nile project a UN funded project run through a collaboration between Met Office, DHI, and the MWRI in Cairo, which was looking at the impact climate change may have on the Nile.
  • 2007: Manager of the second work package of Energy Phase 2: a project advising the principal UK energy companies on the implications of climate change and their strategy for adapting to it. Carlo was responsible for assessing the energy companies vulnerability to climate change, using a regional climate model.

Carlo is also actively exploring innovative ways to engage with a wide audience on climate related topics. He has been one of the contributors to OPAL the national survey on climate.. This partially reflects work done throughout the years in collaboration with several British artists as part of the Futuresonic project.

Career background

During his early days at the Met Office (2005-2007), Carlo contributed to the development of the first operational system able to assimilate GPS RO data into an operational numerical weather prediction model. The activity, was part of an European effort to develop a multi-national infrastructure Global Navigation Satellite System Receiver for Atmospheric Sounding Satellite Application Facility (GRAS SAF) for dealing with the high-resolution data-sets provided by the European mission GRAS EUMETSAT.

During his post-doc at York university in Toronto, Carlo worked on a convective parameterization scheme to transport trace-gases in a high-resolution air quality model. The activity was part of a broader project, funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences called MAQNET.

  • 2001-2004, University of L'Aquila ISAC CNR, Italy: PhD in Physics with a specialisation in tropical cyclones and numerical weather modelling.

  • 1998-2001 ISAC CNR fellowship on PBL processes and measurements.

  • 1998, University of Rome, La Sapienza, Italy: BA in Physics with a specialisation on remote sensing.