About Matt Martin

Matt leads the research and development on marine data assimilation systems in the Met Office.

Areas of expertise:

• Assimilation of data into ocean and sea-ice models.

• Analysis of sea surface temperature and sea-ice data.

Publications by Matt 

Current activities

Matt manages the marine data assimilation group which is part of Ocean Forecasting Research. The marine data assimilation team focus on improving the performance of the Met Office's short-range marine forecasting systems by improving their assimilation of observations, and improving the use of SST and sea-ice data in numerical weather prediction models.

The current focus of Matt's work is to lead the implementation and development of a variational ocean data assimilation scheme within the NEMO ocean modelling framework, called NEMOVAR. This scheme is developed in collaboration with  ECMWF,  CERFACS and other groups. Its implementation will improve the assimilation of data into the ocean forecasting systems used in the Met Office in both the deep ocean (FOAM) and shelf-seas systems, providing more accurate estimates of the ocean state with which to initialise forecasts.

Matt also leads the development of the Operational sea Surface Temperature and sea-Ice Analysis (OSTIA) system which provides a global high resolution analysis of SST and sea-ice on a daily basis using satellite data provided by the  Group for High Resolution SST project.

Matt regularly attends meetings of the UK Argo Expert Group which advises on scientific and technical aspects of the UK's contribution to the international Argo project. He is also involved in the SST Thematic Assembly Centre within the European  MyOcean project.

Career background

Matt has worked on ocean data assimilation since starting at the Met Office in 2000. Prior to joining the Met Office he completed a PhD in ocean data assimilation at the Department of Mathematics in the University of Reading. In 2008 Matt became manager of the team responsible for developing the Met Office's marine data assimilation systems.

Since joining the Met Office, Matt has worked on various aspects of the data assimilation including: improving the way in which altimeter sea level anomaly data is assimilated; assessing the impact of Argo temperature and salinity profile data on ocean analyses; implementing a high resolution global SST analysis system; implementing a scheme to assimilate ocean colour data in a coupled physical-biological model; developing a scheme to assimilate sea-ice velocity data; improving the FOAM data assimilation methodology; running and assessing hindcast experiments using FOAM.

External recognition

• Matt is a member of the  GODAE OceanView Science Team and is the co-chair of its Inter-Comparison Task Team. This involves leading international efforts to inter-compare the output of operational ocean forecasting systems.

• Matt is a member of the GHRSST Science Team and chairs the GHRSST Inter-Comparison Technical Advisory Group which is responsible for the coordination of all aspects of the inter-comparison experiments and real-time inter-comparison systems maintained by SST analysis producers.