An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Ruth McDonald

Ruth is a climate scientist working on understanding the impact of climate change on extra-tropical storms and tropical cyclones.

Areas of expertise

  • Extra-tropical storms (wind storms).

  • Tropical cyclones.

  • Understanding the mechanisms of climate change.

Current activities

Ruth is a senior climate scientist with particular expertise in storms.Her main area of research involves understanding the mechanisms of climate change by analysing changes in extra-tropical and tropical cyclones in global coupled ocean-atmosphere models and in atmosphere models forced with enhanced sea surface temperatures.

Ruth's current work involves estimating the uncertainty of future changes in storms by analysing the changes in a perturbed physics ensemble. She is also involved in assessing the simulation of storms in the climate models.

Career background

Ruth joined the Met Office Hadley Centre in 1992 and worked initially on model development. She then began carrying out research into the impact of climate change on extra-tropical and tropical cyclones. She has also carried out experiments to understand the mechanisms of the future changes in storms.

She is the lead author of four publications in refereed journals on the impacts of increased greenhouse gases on mid-latitude storms and tropical cyclones.

Prior to joining the Met Office, Ruth completed an MSc on Weather, Climate and Modelling at Reading University. She also has a BSc in Mathematics from Leeds University.