Current weather and climate risks

Across the globe, both the weather and climate can have huge impacts on people and ecosystems.

Extreme weather events include flash floods, storms, and heatwaves. These can damage infrastructure, force people out of their homes, and place overwhelming pressure on healthcare. Longer-term climate risks can lead to systemic issues, such as droughts causing water shortages and disruption to food supplies.

Some of the key questions we are trying to answer are:

• How is weather and climate changing in different parts of the world?
• What is influencing these changes?
• In the UK, how do these changes vary by region and geography?

How do we answer these questions?

We produce a range of deliverables to help answer this question. Our verbal and written advice includes briefings, reports, expert reviews, model development, and website content.

Here are some of the main things we deliver:

Climate Dashboard

The Met Office Climate Dashboard provides monthly updates on key metrics. This includes sea level, global temperature, and atmospheric CO₂ concentration. You can download data from this website, for free.

• View the Met Office Climate Dashboard

3-month outlooks

Each month, we provide a forecast of precipitation and temperature over the next three months. This is part of a suite of forecasts designed for contingency planners.

• View the most recent 3-month outlook

UK State of the Climate

This is an annual publication, which provides an up-to-date assessment of the UK climate. This includes a full report and accompanying communication materials.

• View the latest UK State of the Climate report

UK Climate Projections (UKCP)

The UK Climate Projections (UKCP) provides the most up-to-date assessment of how the climate of the UK may change over the 21st century.

• View the latest UK Climate Projections

Support for UNFCCC COP

Each year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) holds an annual action summit on climate change, the Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting. Delegates from around the world come together to discuss the science of climate change. They lay out their own countries’ plans and ambitions to meet climate targets and explore possible solutions. The Met Office provides support to this important conference.

• Read more about how the Met Office contributes to COP

The Met Office website

We update the climate science pages of Met Office website. This includes a central resource that ties together information on extreme weather events.

• View the latest research on extreme weather events

Near-term prediction

We provide annual and decadal temperature forecasts. The latter includes the risk of exceeding 1.5°C warming above pre-industrial levels.

• Read more about near-term prediction

Updates to climate models

UKESM1 and HadGEM3-GC3.1 are two state-of-the-art climate models. We use these to study the Earth-system and climate. They are both the result of years of work, featuring a host of advances over previous models.

• Read more about UKESM1 and HadGEM3-GC3.1

Research from the Met Office Hadley Centre

Scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre also publish papers in leading scientific journals. The team collaborates with other institutes from around the world.

Names in bold are lead authors from the Met Office.

2020 papers

• Kendon et al. A temperature of 20 degrees C in the UK winter: a sign of the future?
• Cornes et al. CLASSnmat: A global night marine air temperature data set, 1880-2019
• Menary et al. Aerosol-Forced AMOC Changes in CMIP6 Historical Simulations
• Anstey et al. The SPARC Quasi-Biennial Oscillation initiative
• Holt et al. An evaluation of tropical waves and wave forcing of the QBO in the QBOi models
• Lu et al. Detectable Anthropogenic Influence on Changes in Summer Precipitation in China
• Andrews et al. Historical Simulations With HadGEM3-GC3.1 for CMIP6
• Li et al. Effect of the North Pacific Tropospheric Waveguide on the Fidelity of Model El Nino Teleconnections
• Richter et al. Progress in Simulating the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in CMIP Models
• Navarro et al. Link Between Autumnal Arctic Sea Ice and Northern Hemisphere Winter Forecast Skill
• Loeb et al. New Generation of Climate Models Track Recent Unprecedented Changes in Earth's Radiation Budget Observed by CERES
• Andrews and Forster. Energy budget constraints on historical radiative forcing
• Christidis and Stott. The extremely cold start of the spring of 2018 in the United Kingdon
• Squintu et al. Building Long Homogeneous Temperature Series across Europe: A New Approach for the Blending of Neighboring Series
• Allan et al. Placing the AD 2014-2016 'protracted' El Nino episode into a long-term context

2019 papers

• Jackson et al. The Mean State and Variability of the North Atlantic Circulation: A Perspective From Ocean Reanalyses
• Alexander et al. On the use of indices to study extreme precipitation on sub-daily and daily timescales
• Bronnimann et al. Unlocking Pre-1850 Instrumental Meteorological Records: A Global Inventory
• Barbero et al. A synthesis of hourly and daily precipitation extremes in different climatic regions
• Dunn et al. Changes in statistical distributions of sub-daily surface temperatures and wind speed
• Dunstone et al. Skilful Real-Time Seasonal Forecasts of the Dry Northern European Summer 2018
• Conforth et al. The First Forecasters' Handbook for West Africa
• Zhang et al. Potential Predictability of North China Summer Drought
• Slivinski et al. Towards a more reliable historical reanalysis: Improvements for version 3 of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis system
• Kennedy et al. Global and regional climate in 2018
• Ceppi and Gregory. A refined model for the Earth's global energy balance
• Walker et al. Skill of dynamical and GHACOF consensus seasonal forecasts of East African rainfall
• Fenech et al. Meteorological drivers and mortality associated with O-3 and PM2.5 air pollution episodes in the UK in 2006
• Hollis et al. HadUK-Grid-A new UK dataset of gridded climate observations
• Gabda et al. A step towards efficient inference for trends in UK extreme temperatures through distributional linkage between observations and climate model data
• Palmer et al. Adequacy of the Ocean Observation System for Quantifying Regional Heat and Freshwater Storage and Change
• Bradshaw et al. A novel approach for exploring climatic factors limiting current pest distributions: A case study of Bemisia tabaci in north-west Europe and assessment of potential future establishment in the United Kingdom under climate change
• Hawkins et al. Hourly weather observations from the Scottish Highlands (1883-1904) rescued by volunteer citizen scientists
• Meyssignac et al. Measuring Global Ocean Heat Content to Estimate the Earth Energy Imbalance
• Sloyan et al. Evolving the Physical Global Ocean Observing System for Research and Application Services Through International Coordination
• Allison et al. Towards quantifying uncertainty in ocean heat content changes using synthetic profiles
• Fraser et al. Investigating the predictability of North Atlantic sea surface height
• Lewis et al. GSDR: A Global Sub-Daily Rainfall Dataset
• Kent et al. Observing Requirements for Long-Term Climate Records at the Ocean Surface
• Kennedy et al. An Ensemble Data Set of Sea Surface Temperature Change From 1850: The Met Office Hadley Centre HadSST.4.0.0.0 Data SetLink
• Frajka-Williams et al. Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: Observed Transport and Variability
• Duan et al. Detection of human influences on temperature seasonality from the nineteenth century - Link
• Chevuturi et al. Indian summer monsoon onset forecast skill in the UK Met Office initialized coupled seasonal forecasting system (GloSea5-GC2)
• Stone et al. Experiment design of the International CLIVAR C20C+ Detection and Attribution project
• Smith et al. Robust skill of decadal climate predictions
• Hakim et al. Evaluation of tropospheric ozone and ozone precursors in simulations from the HTAPII and CCMI model intercomparisons - a focus on the Indian subcontinent
• Alkhayuon et al. Basin bifurcations, oscillatory instability and rate-induced thresholds for Atlantic meridional overturning circulation in a global oceanic box model
• Jain et al. Skill of Indian summer monsoon rainfall prediction in multiple seasonal prediction systems
• Marthews et al. The Impact of Human-Induced Climate Change on Regional Drought in the Horn of Africa
• Davis et al. The Importance of Unresolved Biases in Twentieth-Century Sea Surface Temperature Observations
• Hardiman et al. The Impact of Strong El Nino and La Nina Events on the North Atlantic - Link
• Picas et al. A 19th century daily surface pressure series for the Southwestern Cape region of South Africa: 1834-1899
• Andrews et al. Observed and Simulated Teleconnections Between the Stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and Northern Hemisphere Winter Atmospheric Circulation
• Garry et al. Model-Derived Uncertainties in Deep Ocean Temperature Trends Between 1990 and 2010
• Scaife et al. Tropical rainfall predictions from multiple seasonal forecast systems
• Lim et al. Skilful seasonal prediction of Korean winter temperature
• Thornton et al. Skilful seasonal prediction of winter gas demand
• Vautard et al. Evaluation of the HadGEM3-A simulations in view of detection and attribution of human influence on extreme events in Europe
• Bedfort et al. Seasonal forecast skill for extratropical cyclones and windstorms
• Christidis et al. The extremely wet Match of 2017 in Peru

2018 papers

• Dunstone et al. Predictability of European winter 2016/2017
• Kennedy et al. Global and regional climate in 2017
• Smith et al. Predicted Chance That Global Warming Will Temporarily Exceed 1.5 degrees C
• Undorf et al. Contracting the Effects of the 1850-1975 Increase in Sulphate Aerosols from North America and Europe on the Atlantic in the CESM
• Ayarzaguena et al. Intraseasonal Effects of El Nino-Southern Oscillation on North Atlantic Climate
• Buermann et al. Widespread seasonal compensation effects of spring warming on northern plant productivity
• Leahy et al. Using Neural Networks to Correct Historical Climate Observations
• Maycock et al. Revisiting the Mystery of Recent Stratospheric Temperature Trends
• Singh et al. California Winter Precipitation Predictability: Insights From the Anomalous 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 Seasons
• Dale et al. Understanding how changing rainfall may impact on urban drainage systems; lessons from projects in the UK and USA
• Tinker et al What are the prospects for seasonal prediction of the marine environment of the North-west European Shelf?
• Baker et al. An Intercomparison of Skill and Overconfidence/Underconfidence of the Wintertime North Atlantic Oscillation in Multimodel Seasonal Forecasts
• Hollaway et al. A method for uncertainty constraint of catchment discharge and phosphorus load estimates
• Wang et al. Contrasting interannual atmospheric CO2 variabilities and their terrestrial mechanisms for two types of El Ninos
• Christidis et al. Different Ways of Framing Event Attribution Questions: The Example of Warm and Wet Winters in the United Kingdom Similar to 2015/16
• Ciavarella et al. Upgrade of the HadGEM3-A based attribution system to high resolution and a new validation framework for probabilistic event attribution
• Levine et al. On the climate model simulation of Indian monsoon low pressure systems and the effect of remote disturbances and systematic biases
• Mathison et al. Estimating sowing and harvest dates based on the Asian summer monsoon
• Christiansen et al. Was the Cold European Winter of 2009/10 Modified by Anthropogenic Climate Change? An Attribution Study
• Wilcox et al. Multiple perspectives on the attribution of the extreme European summer of 2012 to climate change
• Menary et al. Limits on determining the skill of North Atlantic Ocean decadal predictions
• Fenech et al. The influence of model spatial resolution on simulated ozone and fine particulate matter for Europe: implications for health impact assessments
• Davies et al. On the accuracy of aerosol photoacoustic spectrometer calibrations using absorption by ozone
• Dunstone et al. Skilful Seasonal Predictions of Summer European Rainfall
• Angelil et al. On the nonlinearity of spatial scales in extreme weather attribution statements
• Kendon et al. When Will We Detect Changes in Short-Duration Precipitation Extremes?
• Menon et al. Modelling the moistening of the free troposphere during the northwestward progression of Indian monsoon onset
• Baker et al. Improved seasonal prediction of UK regional precipitation using atmospheric circulation
• Barry et al. West Africa climate extremes and climate change indices
• Brown. The drivers of variability in UK extreme rainfall