Areas of expertise

• Sea-level rise.
• Coastal and polar regions.
• Flood risk management.

 Current activities

Diogo is a senior scientist for the Met Office Hadley Centre. His role involves developing climate science and advising businesses and governments around the world on how to develop and strengthen their capabilities to deal with the impacts associated with climate change, in particular those relating to sea-level rise.  Diogo has extensive experience in generating global, regional and local sea-level rise scenarios and continues to develop in-house capability on inundation modelling driven by Hadley Centre sea-level projections (MORSE).

Diogo is also a specialist in visualising sea-level rise and identifying consequent global "hazard hotspots".  He continues to be a lead scientific contributor to a number of reports and projects on climate change adaptation in Europe, Australia, South America and Asia.

In 2010 he was formally nominated as a Lead Author for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the IPCC.

Diogo is the lead for the Hadley Centre Coasts Focus Group – a science, consultancy and research focus group for marine and coastal impacts bringing robust science into the climate adaptation arena.

In 2009 Diogo co-ordinated the Hadley Centre's development of the MORSE tool that projects time mean relative sea-level changes and displays them on a web-based interactive platform. The initial results were presented at the  4 degrees conference.

In the same year, Diogo spoke at the Copenhagen Climate Congress on Adapting Coastal Zone and Marine Resources to Climate Change, where adaptation to a new set of sea-level rise scenarios was the principal focus.

Career background

Before joining the Hadley Centre in 2008 Diogo managed a group of flood risk engineers and planners for the EA.  He was responsible for the liaison with other civil contingency and emergency response authorities, managed community expectations for flood preparedness and worked with partners to better understand how different sectors of society respond to environmental threats differently. He also researched how projections of sea-level rise are likely to impact on current flood warning and monitoring systems.

In 2008 Diogo was presented with the Climate Change Hero Award by the EA for innovative work in mapping sea-level rise in the North East of England and his contribution to increasing awareness and understanding of climate change.

He has significant experience in priority management in assessing developmental risks in the planning cycle with a particular focus on projected climate impacts, in particular relating to fluvial and coastal flooding.  Diogo also has expertise on planning policy statements and regulations and European legislative framework relating to flood risk. As a manager, statutory development planning consultant responsibility for environmental issues, with a focus on climate adaptation, ranging from large coastal infrastructures such as a power station to upgrades to major international ports and airports.

Diogo has a diverse academic background that includes Neuropsychology, Artificial Intelligence and Environment Management and Technology.  He completed his Postgraduate Diploma in Environmental Sciences at Aberdeen University in 2002.