Objective of the Joint Centre

The joint centre was officially opened on 5 December 2000 by Sir John Harman, the Chairman of the Environment Agency, to bring together Met Office and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology staff on one site at Wallingford, to work on the interface of weather and flow forecasting, especially in supporting flood warning and water resource management.

Weather forecasting

The Met Office Numerical Weather Prediction Model predicts the weather, at global and national scales, up to five days ahead. At times of flood and drought, water managers need good estimates of current and future rainfall amounts and soil wetness. Research at the JCHMR is improving estimates of soil wetness in the NWP model - especially relevant to the military and agriculture.

Rainfall monitoring and forecasting

A network of 15 weather radars around the British Isles monitors and forecasts rainfall up to six hours ahead. Rainfall fields can be viewed at European, national and regional scales. Technology developed at the Met Office and CEH Wallingford improves the quality of radar estimates of rainfall for use in storm and flood warning.

Flood forecasting and warning

Research at the Met Office and CEH Wallingford has produced rainfall monitoring and forecasting models, which feed into flood forecasting systems to predict river level at critical locations throughout a flood-prone region. They incorporate models of

• Catchment response to rain and snow,
• Routing of flow down river channels,
• Interaction of tide, surge and river flood in estuaries.

Climate and land surface

The JCHMR aims to quantify and reduce the uncertainty in future climate predictions through quantifying land surface / atmosphere feedbacks and improving the representation of the land surface using observations from around the world, both measured in situ and from Earth Observation.

We also aim to understand the impacts of climate change on global and regional water cycles and on land ecosystems.

Link to the JULES website

JULES is the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator, based on MOSES (Met Office Surface Exchange System), the land surface model used in the UK Met Office's Unified Model. JULES is intended to become a community model and to be used and developed independently of the meteorological and climate model.