An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Doctor Amy Doherty

Amy Doherty is Science Manager of the National Climate Information Centre (NCIC) at the Met Office, providing monitoring and analysis of UK climate variability and change.

Areas of expertise

  • Climate and meteorological observations
  • Climate risk analysis
  • Atmospheric physics
  • Remote Sensing
  • Communications and science management
  • Technical code management and quality assurance

Publications by Amy Doherty

Email: [email protected]

Current activities

Amy leads the NCIC team who provide long timeseries observational datasets and analysis of UK climate. NCIC is an authoritative source of UK climatological data products. These products enable the public and customers such as government departments, the media, and research bodies, to understand the climatological context of UK weather and climate events as they happen. They also allow society to better understand and manage the risks arising from climate variability and change.

A key aspect of the NCIC work is in the development of UK gridded observation data sets derived from land surface station records. These data are then used for the analysis of UK climate trends and to develop improved understanding of the key drivers of variability and change, drawing on expertise from the wider climate research community.

Amy is project manager for the Climate Modelling User Group (CMUG), a European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) project which bridges the gap between the providers and users of climate observations from space. Amy is also a member of the Editorial Board for the Royal Meteorological Society journal Meteorological Applications. She has worked on numerous projects spanning Africa, Asia and Europe and has been the science lead for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Climate Risk Reports project.

Career background

Doctor Amy Doherty obtained her Ph.D. in meteorological remote sensing with application to agriculture from the University of Greenwich in partnership with the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She completed this in 2003 after which she joined the Met Office in the Satellite Applications team working on assimilation of satellite observations into the Met Office weather forecasting model. In 2020 she moved to International Applied Science and Services area as a senior scientist and from 2022-2023 took on management of the Climate Risk Engagement and Outreach team to cover the permanent manager’s maternity leave. From 2020 to 2023 Amy was a work package lead developing the use of observations in the Weather and Climate Science for Services Partnership India (WCSSP India), part of the Newton Fund.