About Simon Vosper

Simon leads the Orographic Processes group.

Areas of expertise:

• Orographic flows

• Internal gravity waves

• Lee-wave rotors

• Parametrization development

• Numerical modelling

Publications by Simon

Current activities

Simon leads the Orography team within Parametrizations. The main focus of the work is on improving the representation of orography (hills and mountains) in weather and climate models and developing new techniques for local forecasting in mountainous and hilly regions. The research involves detailed studies of orographic flow using high-resolution numerical models such as the Unified Model and Flow Over Hills Model alongside observations from field experiments.

Simon's research interests include a wide range of phenomena, such as orographic drag, internal gravity-wave generation and propagation, wave induced rotors and boundary-layer flow and temperature variability across complex terrain. His work has led to the development of new forecasting tools for atmospheric lee waves and rotors such as 3DVOM. This is used operationally within the Met Office to forecast lee waves and related gustiness across the UK.

Simon also provides support to Met Office Consultancy projects. Recent examples include studies of the potential impacts of mining on local climatology and the development of new techniques for the assessment of wind climatology for renewable energy.

Career background

Simon joined the Met Office in 2001 as a research scientist. Prior to this he was based at the University of Leeds as a postdoctoral research fellow, latterly funded by the  NERC postdoctoral fellowship scheme.

Simon completed a PhD on the behaviour of orographic internal gravity waves at the Department of Applied Mathematical Studies, University of Leeds in 1995. Following this he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on a number of projects at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds and at the University of Surrey. His experience includes participation in and coordination of field measurement programmes, fluid dynamical laboratory experiments and numerical modelling.

External Recognition

• Simon was awarded the L.F. Richardson Prize in 2005. The L.F. Richardson prize is awarded annually for an outstanding paper published in the Royal Meteorological Society journals by an author under the age of 35.

• Simon was awarded the L.G. Groves Memorial Prize for Meteorology in 2007. This is awarded annually to members of the Met Office and the Royal Navy, Army and RAF for the most important contributions to the science of meteorology, the application of meteorology to aviation or operational meteorology.

• Simon is a member of the international steering committee for the ICAM.

• Simon is a member of the international steering committee for the American Meteorological Society Mountain Meteorology conference.

• Simon is an Associate Editor for the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society