Dr David Fereday
David works on developing and improving the seasonal forecast model.
Areas of expertise
-
Atmospheric circulation patterns
-
Land surface
-
Tropical storm tracking
Current activities
David is working on an updated version of the model used in the seasonal forecasting system Met Office seasonal prediction system: GloSea4 with an improved representation of the stratosphere. Dynamical processes involving the stratosphere have been shown to be important for European winter climate, so the updated model is hoped to give more accurate seasonal forecasts.
Another source of potential predictability that David is investigating is the land surface. Previous work has shown that soil moisture anomalies in certain regions can affect the local climate in the following months; experiments are planned to test these effects in Met Office seasonal prediction system: GloSea4.
David is also developing a method for counting and tracking tropical Atlantic storms in the seasonal forecast model. Although the model spatial resolution is too low to produce fully realistic tropical storms, the model does produce storm-like systems whose numbers correlate with observed Atlantic tropical storm numbers.
Career background
David completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Cambridge University, followed by a PhD in the atmospheric dynamics group of the applied mathematics department there. He joined the Climate Variability group in the Met Office Hadley Centre in 2003.