Dr Robert Dunn
Robert is developing datasets in order to study climate extremes.
Areas of expertise
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Data quality control and processing pipelines
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Sub daily datasets
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Climate extremes
Current activities
Robert has developed the HadEX3 dataset, a major update to a dataset of gridded climate extremes indices. This has increased the spatio-temporal coverage over its predecessor (HadEX2) and included recent data so that the dataset covers 1901-2018. He is now working on improvements to these analyses which will underpin the next update to this family of datasets.
Robert is also the lead developer of the HadISD dataset. This is a sub-daily dataset comprising the major meteorological observations since 1931 for over 9000 surface stations across the globe. An automated quality control routine ensures a high level of reproducibility, and the dataset has monthly appends with a larger update run annually. He has also been involved with the development of HadISDH, a gridded, monthly surface humidity dataset based on HadISD. He also contributes to a Copernicus Climate Change Service on "Access to in-situ Observations", bringing together and harmonising in situ surface land and marine data to make them easier to use, by developing the quality control pipeline for sub-daily observations.
Robert also leads the editorial team of the Global Climate chapter of the BAMS State of the Climate report, an annual almanac of the major events of each year, and helps to maintain the Met Office's Climate Dashboard.
Career background
Robert joined the Met Office in 2010 in the Climate Monitoring and Attribution team. Before that he worked as a post-doc at the University of Southampton and at the Excellence Cluster "Universe" in Munich, studying the behaviour of solar-mass black-holes over time from their X-ray emission. He received his PhD from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, which followed on from an MSci in Natural Sciences (Physics) from Cambridge University.