An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Prof Brian Golding

Brian researches to advance our forecasting capabilities of hazardous weather.

Areas of expertise

  • Hydro-meteorology

  • Nowcasting

  • Mesoscale numerical weather prediction

My Publications - Golding, B

Current activities

Brian is co-chair of the World Meteorological Organisation's 10-year high impact weather research project, HIWeather. The project aims to enable increased global resilience to severe weather by improving forecasts of severe weather and its impacts, and the communication of information to users, especially emergency managers. He is also a co-PI of the MED-MI collaboration, with the Health Protection Agency, the London School of Hygience & Tropical Medicine and the European Centre for Environment &amp, to develop a platform for linking weather and health databases.

Career background

Brian has been involved in Numerical Weather Prediction since joining the Met Office in 1972. In the late 1970s he developed the Met Office's ocean wave prediction system and was involved in early work on the wave power climatology of the UK. In the 1980s, after a short spell in operational forecasting, he led the team that developed the world's first operational non-hydrostatic mesoscale NWP system. In 1990 he was seconded to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for two years, when he used the non-hydrostatic model to study a wide variety of Australian weather systems. In the 1990s, he led the development of the automated Nimrod nowcasting system and became involved in a variety of consultancy contracts in the UK and overseas. More recently, he has contributed to the application of rainfall nowcasts and high resolution NWP in flood prediction and participated in the Pitt review of the 2007 summer floods in the UK. From 2006 to 2012 Brian directed the Met Office's research in Weather Science, including all aspects of the weather forecasting process. In 2010 he was Met Office spokesman on the spread of volcanic ash during the Ejyafjallajokull eruption. His most recent work has been in aspects of risk management.

External recognition