The Met Office Hadley Centre is the UK's official centre for climate change research. Partly funded by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), we provide in-depth information to, and advise, the Government on climate change issues.
One of the world’s leading centres for climate change research, our scientists made significant contributions to the Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC and HM Treasury Stern Review, in addition to undertaking research on behalf of Defra.
Met Office Hadley Centre aims:
- understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop computer models of the climate which represent them;
- use computer models to simulate the differences between global and regional climates; the changes seen over the last 100 years, and to predict changes over the next 100 years;
- monitor global and national climate variability and change;
- attribute recent changes in climate to specific factors.
We undertake studies of the global climate using similar, though more extensive, models of the atmospheres, as are used for the prediction of weather conditions.
Independent review of the Met Office Hadley Centre
The independent review of the Met Office Hadley Centre commissioned by Defra and the MoD was published in March 2007. The review examined all aspects of the operation of the Met Office Hadley Centre.
The key conclusions are on the whole very positive with the expert panel concluding that:
'It is beyond dispute that the Met Office Hadley Centre occupies a position at the pinnacle of world climate science and in translating that science into policy advice'
However the report also concluded that the key risk to the continued successful delivery of policy requirements concerns supercomputing provision. The Met Office recognises this is an issue of some urgency and is working with the MoD and Defra to explore ways to achieve and promote a sustainable step change increase in supercomputing capacity.
It is this area that will continue to be a key priority of the Met Office. The report can be found in full on the Defra website:
Read the full report (PDF, 850 kb)
Draft Climate Change Bill
The government released details of its draft Climate Change Bill on 13 March 2007 which has received wide support from various organisations including the Met Office. More details are available on Defra’s web site.