Met Office Hadley Centre

The Met Office Hadley Centre — named in honour of George Hadley — is one of the United Kingdom's leading centres for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. It helps scientists understand how Earth's climate is changing and what that means for the future.

The centre is part of, and based at, the headquarters of the Met Office in Exeter. The Met Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service, and the Hadley Centre focuses on long-term climate patterns rather than day-to-day weather forecasts.

By studying climate change, the Hadley Centre provides important information that helps governments, scientists, and communities prepare for challenges like rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, and other effects of a warming world.

Foundation

The Hadley Centre was started in 1990. It was approved by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at that time. It was first called the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, but its name has changed a few times since then.

Major aims

The Hadley Centre works on important goals to help us understand and predict climate change. It studies how the Earth’s climate works and creates advanced tools, called climate models, to simulate changes in weather and climate both now and in the future. These models help scientists see how climate might change over many years and keep track of changes happening around the world.

In 2020, the centre celebrated its 30th anniversary. The centre’s climate model, known as HadGEM, is used by researchers globally to study climate change, looking at both the oceans and the atmosphere. It gathers data from many places to improve our understanding of the Earth’s climate.

Research projects based on Hadley Centre climate models

The UK Climate Prediction Project uses the Hadley Centre's climate model predictions to help guide government decisions about the future.

Scientists in Australia and Korea use the Hadley Centre's GloSea5 system for forecasting weather far into the future. The volunteer computing project ClimatePrediction.net, based at the University of Oxford, studies global climate change using special versions of the Hadley Centre's climate models. People can help this research by sharing extra computer power. The PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies) project lets scientists worldwide study climate change using regional climate models.