About Jon Petch

Jon is head of Met Office Science Partnerships

Areas of expertise:

• Managing scientific collaboration.

• Atmospheric model development.

• Global and regional model evaluation.

• Process modelling and parametrization development.

Publications by Jon 

Current activities

As head of Met Office Science Partnerships Jon is responsible for the Met Office's national and international relationships with other science organisations. This includes our Unified Model partnerships, our relationship with NERC through the JWCRP, our academic partnerships and a growing range of other key international strategic partners.

Jon continues to carry out research in areas related to atmospheric processes and parametrizations and leads the Global Atmospheric System Studies project.

Career background

Jon has worked on physical modelling and parametrizations since joining the Met Office in 1997. From 2009, in parallel with the science research, Jon has also managed various science collaborations on behalf of the Met Office. This has included the JWCRP - a joint programme between NERC and the Met Office with the overarching goal to ensure that the UK maintains and strengthens its leading international position in weather and climate science. Prior to this Jon created and managed the Academic partnership as well as relationships with other scientific partners such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and JPL.

Jon's science has focused on work which improves the representation of the atmosphere in global and regional models. During his time in the Met Office he has managed the cloud and radiation team and the convection modelling team which are both part of Atmospheric Processes and Parametrizations. The focus of his work has been to ensure that all the different versions of the Unified Model from high-resolution short-range forecasting to global multi-decadal climate change forecasts have the best possible representation of clouds, microphysics and radiation. Often this has involved making use of the Met Office LEM and various versions of the Unified Model to study the physical processes associated with clouds, radiation and convection. This understanding is then used to support the development of the Unified Model and related products.

Before joining the Met Office, Jon spent two years as a visiting scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), implementing a bulk microphysics scheme in the single column version of their climate model. Before this, Jon completed a PhD in clouds and radiation at the department of Meteorology - University of Reading.

External recognition

• Co-chair of Global Atmospheric System Studies. This involves leading a team of international scientists who carry out projects aimed at improving the representation of atmospheric processes in weather and climate models.
• An invited member of WGNE. This group is responsible for fostering the development of atmospheric circulation models for use in weather, climate and environmental prediction on all time scales, and for diagnosing and resolving shortcomings.
• Received the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) L.F. Richardson prize in 2003. This prize is awarded annually for an outstanding paper published in the RMetS journals by an author under 35.
• An invited author of the Ernst Strungmann Forum book titled Clouds in the Perturbed Climate System. This book won the Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) 2009 Choice award.