An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Richard Hill

Areas of expertise

Richard's areas of expertise include:

  • Development of ocean model code systems

  • Code performance and optimisation on parallel supercomputers

  • Unified Model coupling interfaces and infrastructure

  • Use of OASIS couplers in Met Office systems

Current activities

Richard is an Expert Scientific Software Engineer working in the UKESM Core team. The current focus of Richard's work is on planning, development, performance analysis and optimisation of coupled Atmosphere-Ocean-Sea Ice models and their components in the context of multiple program multiple data (mpmd) systems. A particular challenge is the move to develop mechanisms to allow coupling of 3D fields between various model components. New generations of coupled models will place increasing demands on computing resources, as higher resolution multi-component models are developed and deployed. Richard is working to ensure that the infrastructure to run large parallel models is available and that those models continue to be technically and scientifically viable on state-of-the-art supercomputing platforms.

Career background

Prior to joining the Met Office, Richard completed a degree in Applied Physics before spending several years working in commercial IT systems development.

Since joining the Met Office, Richard has undertaken the technical development and management of ocean and coupled models, including parallelization of the Met Office Unified Model ocean and sea ice models to work on the Met Office's first massively parallel supercomputer. Recent work has included prototyping and developing the Met Office's first mpmd coupled climate model, Met Office climate prediction model: HadGEM3 family, based on the UM atmosphere, NEMO ocean and CICE sea ice models using OASIS couplers.

External recognition