The Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading seeks applications for a post-doctoral research role which will provide an exciting opportunity for the post-holder to contribute to and develop research work on observation impact in hazardous weather prediction: measuring the ability of different observation types to improve forecasts of hazardous weather through data assimilation. The post is jointly funded by the University of Reading and the UK Met Office.

In a changing climate, an improved ability to forecast hazardous weather is key to the management of risk for society. Observations play an essential role in numerical weather prediction but are expensive to obtain. Quantitative measures of the impact of observations on weather forecasts allow evaluation of the best use of currently available observations and the design of future observing networks, to help ensure that observational data is used in the most cost-effective way for the benefit of society and the economy. Recently, international collaborative research efforts have developed tools for quantifying the observation impact on global weather forecasts. However, these tools are not applicable to the next generation of regional hazardous numerical weather prediction systems due to nonlinearity and statistical sampling issues. The Met Office Next Generation (NG) system is expected to include high resolution ensemble forecasts, driven by high frequency, spatially dense observation datasets. New approaches are needed to deal with these large data volumes that take advantage of modern data science. The post-holder will co-create their research with scientists at the University of Reading and the UK Met Office.

For further information and to apply see https://jobs.reading.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=8884