An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Tyrone Dunbar

Tyrone is manager of the Urban Climate Services team, which carries out research and development activities to provide information on resilience and adaptation for people living in cities around the world.

Area of expertise

  • Climate service development

  • Climate hazards and risk in urban environments

  • Decadal predictions of extreme UK weather events

  • Boundary-layer dynamics

Tyrone's ORCID iD

Current Activities

Tyrone is working on a number of projects based around developing climate services in urban areas in the UK and China through both the Newton Fund Climate Science for Services Partnership China (CSSP China) programme and the Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF) UK Climate Resilience programme. These services include the City Packs, which provide high-level information for decision-makers in cities, the Heat Service which looks at the risk of extreme temperatures in cities upon infrstructure and people's health, and services looking at urban flooding in the UK and China.

He is also carrying out research into the likelihood of extreme winter temperatures in the UK using decadal prediction hindcasts (using the UNSEEN methodology), as part of the H2020 SECLI-FIRM project and the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme.

Career Background

Before joining the Met Office in 2011, Tyrone was awarded a PhD in atmospheric science from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. The title of his thesis was An optimal inverse method using Doppler lidar measurements to estimate the surface sensible heat flux.

His first post in the Met Office was on secondment to UK government (working in DECC, then BEIS, and Defra) to provide technical scientific advice on climate change. As part of this role, he was involved in the UK government delegation for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report, as well as the teams working on the UK's Climate Change Risk Assessment and the National Adaptation Programme. He provided briefings on developments in climate science to policy-makers across government, as well as helping ministers prepare for debates in parliament and in select committees.

He returned to Met Office HQ in Exeter in 2017 to take up a position as the Private Secretary to the Met Office Chief Scientist. In this role he assisted the Chief Scientist in running the Science Programme at the Met Office, which consists of approx. 550 scientists. He was heavily involved communication of the scientific research carried out at the Met Office, in particular leading the Science Communications Group and the team which ran the Met Office science twitter account, @MetOffice_Sci. He was responsible for the Met Office Science Advisory Committee meetings, and played a leading role in developing the Met Office's Research and Innovation Strategy 2020-30.

In January 2020 he took a post providing maternity cover in the International Climate Services team where he co-lead the climate service development work package of the CSSP China programme, was deputy project leader of the Climateurope project, and contributed to scoping the development of a National Framework for Climate Services in the UK, through the Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF) UK Climate Resilience programme. He also participated in the IPCC AR6 WGI approval session as a member of the UK delegation.

He started in his current role in April 2021.