An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Mike Bell

Mike leads the teams developing the Met Office's ocean forecasting capabilities.

Areas of expertise

  • Ocean dynamics and modelling.

  • Ocean data assimilation.

Publications by Mike Bell

Current activities

Mike is a Met Office Fellow in Ocean Dynamics. His current research interests include: the dynamics of meridional overturning circulations and ocean heat uptake (particularly the roles of Ekman upwelling, near-surface diabatic forcing and meridional boundaries in determining the circulations); the numerical representation of the momentum equations in the NEMO ocean model; methods for diagnosing and controlling the dynamical responses to oceanographic measurements in ocean data assimilation systems.

Career background

Mike joined the Met Office in 1983 and obtained his PhD with Imperial College in 1989. He developed the initial version of the FOAM ocean data assimilation system and took over as manager of the FOAM team in 1996. He was Head of Ocean Forecasting R&D and Head of the National Centre for Ocean Forecasting from 2004-2014.

External recognition

  • Winner of L G Groves Memorial Prize for Meteorology, 2001.

  • Co-chair of International Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) (2005-2008).

  • Member of UK Marine Science Coordination Committee (2008-2014).

  • Member of MyOcean Board (2008-2014).