Joshua Macholl

Areas of expertise

• Tropical cyclones in the southwest Indian Ocean/Mozambique Channel.

• Evaluation and analysis of weather/climate data.                                         

• Quality control procedures associated with climate data publication.

• Communication with national and international stakeholders.

• Scientific communication for internal and external conferences.

• Awareness of machine learning applications and techniques.

Publications by Joshua Macholl

Current activities

As the main Met Office Scientist in the international REPRESA (REsilience and PREparedness to tropical cyclones in Southern Africa) project, Josh works with state-of-the-art high-resolution climate models, analysing historic tropical cyclones and re-modelling their formation and impacts in warmer climates. To prepare for the evolving uncertainties of tropical cyclones due to climate change, his research supports the strengthening of early warning systems and their uptake in vulnerable communities in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar. Josh has aligned his work to a PhD project which he is undertaking with the University of Reading.

Career background

Josh joined the Met Office in February 2022 as a core member of the first cohort of Deployable Project Scientists. Within this role, he completed three six-month scientific projects which introduced him to the diversity of science research within the organisation. Within this role he worked within UK Applied Science supporting local authorities to understand the latest climate change science and its relevance to the development of local adaptation schemes. In his other projects he worked at the forefront of high-resolution numerical weather prediction model development, evaluating the performance of these cutting-edge models against traditional coarser models and satellite observations. As his last project before becoming a permanent member of the Understanding Climate Change team, Josh developed a deep-learning neural network-based algorithm to enhance the automatic detection of anomalous observations as part of the data assimilation process.

Prior to joining the Met Office, Josh worked at Devon County Council as a graduate researcher in transport planning. Here, he proposed expansion ideas for local electric bike schemes, utilised transport modelling software to develop improved transport networks and conducted a research project into the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on local travel.

Josh obtained an upper second class combined honours bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Exeter in 2021. He is particularly interested in the interplay between these subjects and aims to promote this way of thinking amongst scientists to harness both the physical intuition and mathematical logic behind a scientific problem.

External recognition

Josh volunteers as a Climate Science Communications Trainer with the Royal Meteorological Society, delivering training to a range of audiences on the latest climate change science. He is also a member of the Institute of Physics and served as a committee member for two specialist interest groups – Physics Communicators and Nonlinear/Complex Physics from 2020-2024. Within this role he actively engaged with scientists from a range of backgrounds to collaboratively plan and deliver outreach events about physics inclusivity and the history and nomenclature of SI units.