CLIMATE SCIENTIST
Elizabeth Kendon
Hi, my name's Lizzie. I work as a Climate Scientist at the Met Office where I study extreme weather patterns and the impact they have on the planet. When a flood or other extreme weather occurs, I work out what damage it might have done, and try to figure out the likelihood that it will happen again.
Climate Change is a really important issue right now, so it feels great knowing that my Science and Maths background is helping me provide a potential solution. My job affects the whole world and the work I do shapes the way we react to extreme weather conditions. If you are concerned about the environment I can't think of a better job.
Find out abut a career in climate change & how extreme weather affects us.
Did you know?- Salaries range from around £19,500 to £60,000 a year.
- Meteorologists employed in the Mobile Met Unit are attached to the Royal Air Force. They could be sent anywhere in the world on military exercises and operations.
- As a Climate Scientist, your discoveries could even alter government policies on climate change.
- As well as Physics and Maths, Climate Scientists need good powers of observation, attention to detail and accuracy.
- Climate Scientists do much more than forecast the weather. They study climate change and pollution and work out what effects humans have on the weather.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:Hello. My name's Lizzy, and I work here at the UK Met Office in Exeter.
I work in the Hadley Centre as a climate scientist, and I've been working here for about two years.
This is the operation centre where there's all the weather forecasts, and you can see they've got three screens here, which is where they have all the information from the climate model.
And I'm currently showing a satellite picture of conditions around the UK.
But what I'm actually interested in is not so much the daily weather patterns, but how they behave on average, and how this might change in the future under climate change.
So this is my office in the Hadley Centre.
Here you can see on the screen the sort of images that I'm looking at every day.
I come in here at about 8 or 9 in the morning. I spend a lot of my time writing programmes on the computer to try and analyse data, and also that is actually statistical analysis. But one of my major hobbies is mountaineering, and I guess maybe that's why I have such an interest in the weather.
Interested in becoming a Climate Scientist? Find out more about it here, check out our Useful Links section or talk to a careers advisor at school.