Dr David Simonin
David leads the development of the Met Office’s next-generation observation processing and data assimilation systems. He also leads research into the assimilation of surface-based observations for both global and regional NWP.
Areas of expertise
- Data assimilation
- Observation processing
- Uncertainty quantification
- Novel observations
- Weather radar
Publications by David Simonin.
Current activities
Currently, David is leading the development of the Met Office's next-generation observation processing and data assimilation code as part of the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) framework.
David also manages the Assimilation of Surface-Based Observations group contributing to the Satellite and Surface Assimilation theme of the Science Programme Plans. The overarching aim of the group is to undertake R&D to improve the impact of surface-based observations (e.g. upper air, aircraft, and weather radar observations) in the Met Office's global and regional operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems and hence to improve the accuracy of the weather forecasts.
Career background
David completed an MSc in Oceanography followed by a PhD on the automatic detection of internal waves in SAR imagery, both at the University of Southampton. In 2002 David joined Vexcel UK as a scientist, and in the following 5 years his work mainly involved the Arctic sea ice, from monitoring to decadal variability. This included comparisons between observations and climate models (HadCM3, GISS ModelE). He joined the Met Office's Satellite and Surface Assimilation section in 2018.