Career pathways

Lisa Tomkins, Education

As the UK’s national weather service, the Met Office provides forecasts that we can all check out on our phones and TVs to help us plan our activities. Would we be wise to pull waterproofs onto a resistant toddler before heading out for a walk? Can we confidently pack a picnic hamper and blanket for a day trip into the countryside? Or would we be better curled up on a sofa, heeding national weather warnings while cradling a warm cuppa and reaching for a comforting chocolate biscuit.

But the purpose of the Met Office is not simply to help us plan our time; its core purpose is to help us stay safe and thrive. Met Office weather warnings are designed to let the general public, businesses, emergency responders and governments know of the potential impacts of severe weather up to seven days in advance, enabling response plans to be activated. In addition, a wide variety of forecasts are produced, aligned to different customer requirements, and we provide weather planning support worldwide to help countries plan their harvests, prepare for freak weather systems, and monitor their impact on climate change. The work of the Met Office consequently involves numerous teams, from research scientists and informatics specialists to training and communication experts.

To maintain and further develop the expertise needed for this work, the Met Office must also look to the future, helping develop the next generation of its workforce. To meet this need, our Education Outreach and Early Careers teams work closely with schools, colleges, universities and community groups across the UK, with the support of colleagues across the organisation. And this work starts with those of a surprisingly young age.

Back in 2018, Education and Employers published its Drawing the Future study, showing that by age seven, stereotypes are pretty much concreted in. It’s not that stereotypes can’t be challenged later in life, but efforts would need to be invested in first extinguishing those that have already formed. We need to encourage young people across all demographics of the UK to consider careers with the Met Office. So, much of our education outreach work involves providing opportunities for students to meet Met Office staff, to see people like themselves fulfilling Met Office roles. Girls can be made to feel that engineering jobs aren’t for them, for example. So, introducing them to people like Tess Brock in our Specialist Engineering Team can really help. These interactions provide students with information about different pathways into Met Office careers too.

Tess can explain to these young people that she started at the Met Office as a Level 2 Engineering Apprentice before moving on to a Level 3 programme, after which she was taken on as a permanent Technician within the Observations team. She describes how, during her apprenticeship, she worked with various engineering teams, providing experience of a wide range of engineering systems used within the Met Office to collect weather observations from across the country. And she has since been given the opportunity to continue her education by undertaking an Open University degree in Engineering while continuing in her job. Young people often don’t realise that employers can support them while they are working to undertake additional training and education.

The weather observation instruments and sensors that Tess builds, tests, installs and upgrades, send information back to the Met Office headquarters, where it is fed into our highperformance numerical models and used by operational meteorologists to predict the weather, so it is important that they deliver reliable and credible data.

The Early Careers team offers a number of ways into careers at the Met Office. Some follow the apprenticeship route, like Tess; others join us for an industrial placement during a university sandwich year; and others, such as Nick Krol, get a taster of working at the Met Office over one of our summer placements before later returning as a successful job applicant.

From September, the option to join via our new graduate trainee scheme will also exist, as our Early Career programmes are constantly evolving.

Nick Krol did his summer placement with the Met Office back in 2015, following a Geography degree. Over the summer, he was based in the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services, where he was tasked with analysing an historical dataset on climate variations and extremes, using interpolation to fill in missing global data. It was this Hadley Centre placement that helped Nick realise that he wanted to do something with more immediate time pressure and impact, so he looked into forecasting, and when an opportunity later came up he applied to become an Operational Meteorologist. His initial year involved completing the Met Office’s Operational Meteorologist Foundation Course with on-the-job training at various military bases before he passed the course and was able to work independently. He is now a Senior Operational Meteorologist in the Joint Operational Meteorological and Oceanographic Centre team at the Armed Forces HQ in Northwood, just outside London. Here Nick’s work helps enable the UK and Allied armed forces to gain operational and tactical advantage during deployments.

Nick particularly enjoys the additional opportunities that become available as an Operational Meteorologist, and the skills that can be built along the way. For example, last year he provided forecasting for Wimbledon, getting the chance to work with colleagues from Meteo-France, the French national meteorological service, prior to which he had been able to participate in a tour to Gibraltar. This winter, he has assisted winter forecasting for the National Highways Agency.

So, after learning about weather and climate and being introduced to Met Office staff through our Education Outreach programme, how can young people determine whether they might like to work at the Met Office? For Nick, undertaking work experience with us as a 15-year-old confirmed his wish to become a meteorologist, and he was then able to begin planning his education and career pathway. With this in mind, the Met Office is relaunching its work experience programme in July this year.

To enable all students who would like to participate to do so, no matter where in the UK they live, we are rolling out a virtual work experience programme, involving live webinars and a menu of online sessions and project work, with a proportion of students also being given access to mentoring. With no cap on the number of students participating, we can maximise the number and diversity of young people able to take part, enabling us to develop a larger and more diverse pool of future talent. After completing the virtual work experience, those who are most certain of their wish to pursue a career within the Met Office or broader Civil Service will then be able to apply for a limited number of more in-depth in-person work experience opportunities. Participating students will also be given application guidance and details of Early Careers opportunities.

So, back to that chocolate biscuit you were reaching out for while tucked into the sofa. You may not have considered how the Met Office helped transport that biscuit to your local shop, involving the expertise of people like Tess and Nick.

Moving foodstuffs around the UK and beyond is not a simple business, with firms needing to transport the right products to the right places at the right time, while maintaining quality. When transporting chocolate-covered biscuits between factory and shop, the last thing the businesses involved want is for them to melt on the journey due to hot weather, but transporting goods in climate-controlled vehicles all year round is not cost- or carbon-efficient. This is where the Met Office’s Business team comes in. Using data generated from the instruments installed and maintained by our engineering team, our operational meteorologists are able to provide the necessary forecasts which our Business team supplies to chocolate biscuit production and retail firms in the form of reports. They can then use these reports to decide what kind of transportation is needed to ensure the chocolate biscuits are on the shelf when we want them, and not stuck together in a chocolatey mass inside a lorry – providing you with the perfect chocolate-covered biscuit to accompany your cup of tea as you shelter from the winter weather outside.

Operational meteorologist: you work to produce and communicate forecasts used to help keep people safe and assist organisations in making their own business decisions.

Scientist in weather science or observations: you collaborate with other researchers to further our understanding across meteorological disciplines.

Senior software developer: you support and develop systems that provide real-time data to operational Numerical Weather Prediction, products and research.

Observations engineer: you ensure we can collect highquality observational data from land and sea and high up into our atmosphere.

Climate scientist: you maintain our vital datasets, contribute to the development of climate models and projections, and work with industry to create new climate services.