Core Development Team
The core group is responsible for putting together the component models, applying and (with the wider community) evaluating UKESM. We are:
Colin is a Professor in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and a NCAS core scientist. He heads the joint Met Office/NERC UKESM project. In his role as head of the UKESM project he is based at the Met Office in Exeter where the bulk of the UKESM core group are located. His primary role is to lead development of the next generation of UK Earth system models, with the 1st version of UKESM targeted for application within the WCRP 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6).
Jeremy is the lead computational scientist for the UK Earth System Model (UKESM). This includes management of the software engineers who are working on the development of the model and its infrastructure, with a particular focus on the optimisation of the model to ensure that it runs efficiently. Jeremy also liaises with technical collaborators who are developing UKESM components and system enhancements, and coordinates technical support for external UKESM development and applications.
Jane is a senior research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre working in development and evaluation of the aerosol component UKCA-mode and its interactions within the fully coupled UKESM model. Her current work focuses on improving the simulation of aerosols and their feedbacks within the fully coupled model. Jane is currently implementing the state-of-the-art aerosol and chemistry model, UKCA-mode in UKESM replacing the older CLASSIC scheme used in HadGEM2-ES. Jane’s areas of expertise include: atmospheric modelling; aerosol feedbacks on weather and climate; climate and NWP model development and evaluation; and technical aspects of running the unified model.
- Steve RumboldAerosol-clouds-radiationNCAS, based at Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
Steve is a National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) research scientist. Steve simulates global sources, sinks and transport of anthropogenic aerosol and investigates the associated impact on air quality and climate, working as part of the UKESM core development team. Steve’s areas of expertise are: modelling transport of aerosol using the Met Office Unified Model; aerosol emission, deposition, chemistry and transport; radiative transfer and aerosol optical properties; stratospheric temperature and ozone trends; and effect of the 11-year solar cycle (sunspots) on the stratosphere.
- Doug KelleyLand/vegetationCEH, WallingfordDoug KelleyLand/vegetation
- Stephanie WoodwardDust-radiation-vegetationMet Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
Stephanie's research work involves the development of the mineral dust scheme within the Met Office Unified Model, particularly within the framework of the UK Earth System Model, and the use of the scheme to study dust and its interactions with the atmosphere and the wider earth system.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/stephanie-woodward
Robin is a UKESM Core Team Developer and NCAS-Climate core staff. His research interests are: Earth System model development, Ice-sheet--Climate interactions, Stability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
Paleoclimate, especially the glacial cycles of the last million years, and Geoenginering.Rob joins the UKESM Core Group as part of the NCEO contribution to the UKESM Long-Term Science Multi-Centre project. He will be involved in the evaluation of UKESM as well as coordinating between the UKESM team and the wider NCEO/remote sensing communities.
Rob’s background is in the generation of atmospheric concentrations of key climate-relevant species, particularly CO2 and CH4, from remote sensing data. He is currently approaching the end of a European Space Agency Living Planet Fellowship where he has investigated the temporal/spatial distributions of these greenhouse gases, identifying anomalies and linking them to the key geophysical drivers.Lee is a marine ecosystem modeller with an interest in the development, evaluation and validation of global scale models. Lee leads the marine model evaluation toolkit development for the UK Earth System Model.
As a member of the UK Ocean Biogeochemistry Network Model Inter-comparison Experiment, iMarNet, Lee coupled the ERSEM model to NEMO in the global settings to allow the comparison of UK biogeochemical models coupled with the same underlying physics. Lee also used this model to investigate the use of emergent properties as a method to evaluate the performance of marine ecosystem models.
Outside of model development, Lee has also contributed to a range of shorter projects, including studies on the impact of leaks in carbon capture and storage sites in the North Sea, and a pilot study which pioneers the use of surfers as a platform for collecting data in the near shore environment.Julien is a marine systems modeller in UKESM, member of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) based in Southampton.
Andrew is a marine systems modeller in UKESM, member of the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) based in Southampton. Andrew’s interests are on: global-scale plankton ecosystem modelling, biogeochemistry of the ocean's carbon cycle, the role of nitrification in the ocean's nitrogen cycle, geoengineering, and diatom ecology and the ocean's silicon cycle.
Till is the Model Configuration Manager for UKESM-LO: Developing the low-resolution version of the next-generation UK Earth System Model. Main research interests are: Earth System Model Development, Processes of ocean heat uptake and heat transport within the ocean, and their representation in Simple Climate Models, Models of the ocean biogeochemistry, Eddy-induced transports and wind-driven overturning cells in the Southern Ocean, Dynamics of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and its representation in coupled climate models, and The role of vertical mixing as a driver of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
Kaitlin Naughten joined the UKESM core group in April 2022. As part of the TerraFIRMA National Capability project, she will be studying Antarctic ice, ocean, and climate interactions, and further developing the ice sheet-ocean coupling in the UKESM. Kaitlin is based at the British Antarctic Survey, where her previous work has focused on ice shelves in the Amundsen and Weddell Seas, and their response to climate change. She co-developed the regional coupled ice sheet-ocean model ÚaMITgcm, and also has experience with the ocean models ROMS, FESOM, and MOM.
- Yongming TangHigh resolution configuration managerMet Office Hadley Centre, Reading
Yongming works on the UK Earth System Model as configuration manager for the high resolution model UKESM-HI. She is responsible for incorporating scientific and technical changes into the model development path, and evaluating the impact of these changes. She manages the system, tracking changes, working with experts in each component model, and ensuring that effective use is made of the system. She maintains the model at the latest code release for each component and influences component model development to improve aspects of performance important for UKESM.
- Marc StringerCoupling and OptimizationNCAS, based at the Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
As of June 2014, Marc is a computational scientist working in the core team responsible for setting up UKESM1, the next generation UK Earth System Model. Employed by NCAS-Climate (University of Reading), funded by NERC, and based at the Met Office in Exeter.
Before joining the UKESM team, Marc worked in the department of Meteorology at the University of Reading from the start of 2001 until the end of May 2014. Richard is an Expert Scientific Software Engineer working in the UKESM Core team. The current focus of Richard's work is on planning, development, performance analysis and optimisation of coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Sea Ice models and their components in the context of multiple program multiple data (mpmd) systems. A particular challenge is the move to develop mechanisms to allow coupling of 3D fields between various model components. New generations of coupled models will place increasing demands on computing resources, as higher resolution multi-component models are developed and deployed. Richard is working to ensure that the infrastructure to run large parallel models is available and that those models continue to be technically and scientifically viable on state-of-the-art supercomputing platforms.
Valeriu (V) joined the NCAS CMS group as a UKESM Core Member based at the University of Reading in April 2017. He previously worked in gravitational waves research and computational analyses, as part of the LIGO collaboration at Cardiff University. Prior to this V worked in the area of computational virology at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He obtained a PhD in gravitational waves data analysis from Cardiff University in 2012. He will be working on a number of computationally-oriented projects including diagnostic pipeline development, data acquisition and processing, MIP conversion tools and general integration and optimization of both existing and future model evaluation tools. V is also contributes to the development of the interactive ice sheet version of UKESM1; UKESM-IS.
- Catherine HardacreAtmospheric chemistryMet Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
- Hazel JefferyProject ManagerNCAS, based at Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
Hazel joined the UKESM core group in December 2019. She is the Project Manager for UKESM and CRESCENDO. Prior to joining the Met Office Hazel has worked at NERC as Head of Strategic Management, in Brussels at the UK Research Office and in a European Commission funded research programme and had a research career in environmental chemistry at CEH and Harwell.
- Phil HarrisLand-atmosphere interactionsCEH, WallingfordPhil HarrisLand-atmosphere interactions
Phil joined the UKESM core group in October 2019, prior to which he was a UKCEH National Centre for Earth Observation staff member working on land-atmosphere interactions and climate model evaluation. He is a long-time JULES user and will be working on the development of land surface processes in UKESM. Phil has a Ph.D. in Meteorology from the University of Reading where he investigated the effect of future climate change on the Amazon forest. In recent years he has been using satellite observations to research the role of soil moisture on land surface energy fluxes and storm initiation, and using this to develop diagnostics for evaluating global climate models.
- Stephen PringCoupling and OptimisationMet Office Hadley Centre, Exeter
Stephen joined the UKESM core group in February 2020 as a scientific software engineer. Prior to this Stephen worked in Dynamics Research at the Met Office between 2015-2019. During this time Stephen worked on developing the next-generation dynamical core called GungHo. Designed to be more scalable than the current dynamical core ENDGame within the UM, GungHo uses a cubed-sphere mesh rather than a latitude-longitude mesh to avoid singularities at the poles. Before this Stephen worked in Data Assimilation between 2010-2014. Here Stephen worked on developing the ensemble-variational ensemble generation system which is now being used operationally at the Met Office for generating the forecast ensemble members.
Past Members of UKESM
- Vicky LeeLand Ice
- Colin JohnsonAtmospheric chemistry
- Alberto MuñozProject management
- Anthony SiahaanIce-Sheets
- Alistair SellarScience Manager
