Hadley Centre: Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research

	The Hadley Centre

Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

Met Office building
The Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, which is part of the Met Office, provides a focus in the United Kingdom for the scientific issues associated with climate change. The main aims of the Hadley Centre are:

To understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop state-of-the-art climate models which represent them;
To use climate models to simulate global and regional climate variability and change over the last 100 years and to predict changes over the next 100 years;
To monitor global and national climate variability and change;
To attribute recent changes in climate to specific factors;
To understand, with the aim of predicting, the natural interannual to decadal variability of climate.

It currently employs around 100 staff and uses two NEC SX-6 supercomputers. Most of its funding comes from contracts with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), other United Kingdom Government departments and the European commission.

News and features

	Science meets Hollywood A new Hollywood blockbuster, 'The Day After Tomorrow', is set for a worldwide release on 28 May 2004. The timescales depicted may be unrealistic, but the science behind the movie is real enough... From News

	Catarina - climate change signal? The development of the first ever hurricane in the South Atlantic is another part of the climate change jigsaw... More about Tropical cyclones

	COP9 climate change Recent research on climate change from the Hadley Centre. This and other climate change brochures are available online for you to download... From Hadley Centre publications

Climate research

Climate monitoring and climate data sets
The Hadley Centre receives, quality controls, and archives large amounts of observed climate data. These are used for monitoring the climate, in studies of the causes of climate change, and in climate modelling.

Types of climate models used in the Hadley Centre
Our detailed three-dimensional representations of major components of the climate system are mostly run on the Met Office's NEC SX-6 supercomputers. We use these models in various different configurations.

Climate change projections
Key results from climate-change experiments conducted using Hadley Centre computer models of the climate system.

Carbon cycle
The role of the carbon cycle in climate change, how the models represent it, and what the results are when these models are included in climate change simulations.

Who carries out the research?

Met Office's Hadley Centre research is organised into several themes, each with a theme manager. You can contact theme managers and other research staff

The majority of publications by staff at the Hadley Centre (often in collaboration with authors from other institutions) appear in books, brochures, peer-reviewed scientific journals, and conference proceedings.

Opportunities exist for scientists from UK and non-UK institutes to undertake collaborative research for periods of up to a year. More about visiting scientist programme

Learning about climate change

View an animated spinning globe
Showing the Earth showing surface air temperature change from an IS92a experiment with HadCM2 including the cooling effect of sulphate aerosols. You will need to have an MPEG viewer installed to view the animation. The file is 2.2 Mbyte. Learn more about climate change projections

The climate system
Weather and climate have a profound influence on life on Earth.

More about Learning from the Met Office

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