An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Changgui Wang

Areas of expertise

  • Hydrological and environmental modelling
  • Catchment modelling
  • Mesoscale and very high resolution NWP modelling
  • Development of high resolution systems for climatological studies
  • Development of convective-scale ensemble forecasting

Current activities

Changgui's work centres on the development of very high resolution regional climate modelling system. This includes the development of surface field ancillary data assimilation system and the boundary generation system as well as evaluation of high resolution models for specific downstream applications. A substantial proportion of work involves the development of Met Office Unified model system, focusing on the infrastructure development for mesoscale climatological system. The aim is to develop a new generation of very high resolution regional climate modelling system (PRECIS version 3) to enable rapid and cost effective configuration of the Unified Model system to provide data for high resolution climatological impact studies.

Changgui's other activities include the UM enhancement of river-routing component for providing river flows from land to rivers and oceans; the DFID-Met Office Hadley Centre Africa Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP) - enabling downscaling of seasonal forecasts, the development of ensemble climate prediction system and joint MOHC-NERC project on Convective Extremes (CONVEX) etc.

Changgui is also engaged in regional modelling projects in China, for the DfID funded Adapting to Climate Change in China (ACCC) project, and the Defra funded The China-UK Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN) project. These projects involve scientific advice on regional climate modelling for China, facilitation of regional climate model runs, and organising and delivery of scientific training for Chinese research scientists.

Career background

Changgui joined the Met Office in 2007 to work on the infrastructure development for mesoscale climatological system and the application of very high resolution NWP for predicting radar ducting. Changgui was a lead research scientist for the ABCANZ collaboration in applying high-resolution NWP models for radar propagation. She has developed the local high resolution climate modelling (MESOTOOL) system to enable rapid and cost effective configuration of the UM, a tool for which she provided guidance and support to users who develop and run very high resolution (towards 500m) NWP and climate simulations. As the code owner of the MESOTOOL, she continues maintaining and providing support to users to enable the Met Office to provide consultancy service in the aspect of very high resolution climatological impact studies. Changgui also developed the modelling infrastructure for convective-scale ensemble forecasting to explore the benefits of using high-resolution NWP models for hazardous weather prediction while she worked for the Mesoscale Research Group at the Met Office.

Before joining the Met Office, Changgui spent seven years as a senior computational scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science for providing advice, support and training for UM software systems. Prior to that, Changgui completed her PhD in environmental modelling at the Department of Civil Engineering in the University of Newcastle. During her PhD studies, she spent two years as a catchment environmental modeller at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Changgui worked for the Institute of Water Resource Protection, Yangtze River Basin Commission, China before she came to the UK where she was awarded the first prize of advance technology in 1995 for leading the project of the impact of Three-Gorges Reservoir on the Downstream River Water Quality.

External recognitions

  • Changgui is invited to talk about her research at scientific conferences and workshops
  • Changgui is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society