The independent review of the Met Office Hadley Centre commissioned by Defra and the MoD has now been published. The review took place over the winter and 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 reports on the science and the supercomputing can be found in full on the Defra web site:
Read the science report (PDF, 854 kb)
Read the supercomputing report (PDF, 378 kb)