Karen Walter

Karen is a senior scientist supporting and developing meteorological products and services for industry including defence, renewable energy and aviation.

Areas of expertise

  • Data analysis
  • Renewable energy – wind and solar
  • Defence
  • Verification

Current activities

  • Karen is currently on a 6-month secondment to the Aviation Applications team producing a high altitude ice crystal climatology study for the aviation community
  • Developing a verification module for the road industry
  • Very high resolution NWP modelling for defence operations
  • Implementation of solar power PV module at national met service, including development of verification algorithm
  • Development, application and verification of Met Office advanced wind-energy site-screening and planning tool based on downscaled NWP and hindcast data
  • Supporting development of solar climatology over Europe using hindcast data

Career background

Karen holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Strathclyde and an MSc in Weather, Climate and Modelling from the University of Reading.

She worked for 3 years in the life assurance industry training to be an actuary and then for local government implementing climate change policy before joining the Met Office in 2012 as an applied scientist.

During her time at the Met Office, Karen has worked in the Renewable Energy and Post Processing Applications teams, developing and supporting products and working on projects for the defence, renewable energy, aviation and road industries.