An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Adam Maycock

Areas of expertise

  • Operational numerical weather prediction
  • Development of observation processing software
  • Development for large applications
  • Use of observations in NWP
  • Use of Met Office supercomputer

Adam's publications

Current activities

As well as planning for next generation DA systems, the group also provides support and releases of the systems for collaborating partners. Major focus areas include improving the portability of the system by developing an improved interface between the OPS and GTS data, and provision of an ODB based observation monitoring capability, to ensure that all available observations are being used in the most effective way in the assimilation.

Career background

Adam's Met Office career started in 1991 with the development of data assimilation in the UK model. The focus of his work there was in assimilation of cloud and radar precipitation data via the Met Office MOPS system, and in treatment of conventional surface and upper air observations.

He moved into the Observation Processing area in 1996, initially as a software developer and then to OPS System Manager in 2000. The OPS processes raw meteorological observation data for input to the data assimilation component of the NWP suite. For operational use the OPS must be technically and scientifically robust, and run to tight timescales to meet the demands of forecast products.

The OPS is a rapidly evolving system, having to adapt quickly to new data types and computing resource as they become available. The system is developed by staff from a number of research areas, and Adam's role was to oversee the integration, testing and implementation of all changes.