Dame Julia Slingo served as Chief Scientist of the UK Met Office from 2009 to 2016 when she retired. At the Met Office, she led a team of more than 500 scientists working on a broad portfolio of research that underpins weather forecasting, climate predictions and climate change projections. Before joining the Met Office, she was the Director of Climate Research in NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, at the University of Reading. In 2006, she founded the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at Reading, aimed at addressing the cross disciplinary challenges of climate change and its impacts. In 2015 Julia was appointed to the High Level Group of the European Commission Science Advice Mechanism where she served until her retirement.
Throughout her research career Julia has developed and used complex weather and climate models to understand the climate system and to predict its evolution. Her special interests are in tropical weather and climate variability, understanding their influence on the global climate system and their role in monthly to decadal climate prediction. She has worked at the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Reading University.
In her retirement, she has taken on a number of advisory roles, including Special Advisor on Science to the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation, and is now a member of the new NERC Council under UKRI. She also holds an honorary professorship at the Cabot Institute of the University of Bristol, where she chairs the Advisory Board.
Amongst other awards, Dame Julia was elected a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2016.
Professional position
- , The Cabot Institute for the Environment, University of Bristol
- Former Chief Scientist, The Met Office
- Council Member, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
- , World Meteorological Association
Subject groups
- Earth and environmental sciences
Atmospheric physics and meteorology, Climate sciences
