An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Jian-Guo Li

Jian-Guo Li works on ocean surface wave spectral models and is especially interested in transport schemes on unstructured multi-resolution grids.

Area of expertise

  • Non-oscillatory advection schemes on spherical multiple-cell grid.

  • Ocean surface wave model and validation.

  • Atmospheric and oceanic tracer dispersion modelling.

  • Satellite and in situ ocean data assessment and assimilation.

  • Mesoscale atmospheric boundary layer modelling.

Publications by Dr Jian-Guo

Current activities

Development of ocean surface wave spectral models and validation with satellite and buoy observations. Jian-Guo has introduced a rotated spherical grid into regional ocean wave models and has developed UNO advection schemes for ocean wave propagation. Jian-Guo has also developed SRWH for assessment of ASAR ocean surface wave spectra compared with buoy and altimeter observations and for ocean wave spectral analysis.

Jian-Guo is presently developing a SMC grid for ocean wave models. The SMC grid is consistent with the standard latitude-longitude grid used in the Met Office Unified Model but with the flexibility to remove land points out of the ocean wave model. It uses unstructured techniques to handle the irregular coastlines and reserve the simplicity of finite-difference schemes on the standard latitude-longitude grid. It also supports multi-resolution within one model domain.

Career background

Jian-Guo obtained his first degree on Physics (Shanxi University, China) and a masters degree on Space Physics (Chinese Academy of Sciences). During the three years of his masters degree course he developed a stratospheric ozone photochemistry model to study stratospheric ozone depletion. He taught environmental physics and numerical modelling for eight years in Shanxi University before joining the UGAMP project on middle atmospheric radiation modelling as an academic visitor in Imperial College in 1992.

Jian-Guo obtained his PhD degree (Queen Mary, University of London) in 1997 on atmospheric boundary layer modelling of thermally induced valley flows and worked on radar propagation coastal environment modelling as a post-doc. He also has experience of Ocean Data Assimilation from three years at NOC (National Centre of Oceanography), Southampton, using the MOM ocean model. Jian-Guo was a marine environmental modeller on deep sea oil spill and marine acoustics in British Marine Technology before joining the Met Office in December 2003 as a wave modelling scientist.