Met Office chief Penny Endersby: ‘There is not going to be a usual summer’

{"text":[[{"start":7.52,"text":"Even by the erratic standards of UK weather, it has been an exceptional few months: the hottest day in May on record. England’s warmest June. The highest number of days above 35C. With the country baking in its third heatwave this year — and one of the longest on the books — I travel to Devon to meet the woman with a front-row seat."}],[{"start":26.48,"text":"Penny Endersby has been chief executive of the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service, since 2018. The first woman to take on the role, she is already at the table when I arrive, sipping a non-alcoholic gin and tonic."}],[{"start":40.56,"text":"The Met Office’s huge network, including hundreds of weather stations and 1,250 scientists, engineers and meteorologists, has become crucial to everyday life, guiding government policy, helping farmers with their crops and putting emergency responders on alert for weather crises. Every day, the organisation processes about 215bn global data points to forecast the weather and monitor how the climate is changing."}],[{"start":65.72,"text":"Appropriately, and as is often the way in Britain, our conversation begins with some remarks about the weather. At 29C, “it feels quite pleasant now”, Endersby says, especially after the often intense heat of recent months."}],[{"start":78.44,"text":"“[It’s] not even just all over Europe, it’s in the States — it is under a huge heat dome at the moment — and there’s been one in Asia as well,” she says. “Rapid warming is happening and it is global.”"}],[{"start":89.48,"text":"Some scientists have suggested that Portugal and Spain could hit a record-breaking 50C this summer, while temperatures in Japan have soared to over 40C this week."}],[{"start":97.88,"text":"We are lunching at The Galley, a seafood restaurant in Topsham, about 15 minutes’ drive from the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter. The restaurant’s eye-catching blue building overlooks the Exe estuary. Inside, there are paintings of the sea, wicker chairs and walls painted blue and white. Endersby is dressed to match the decor, wearing a white shirt with blue butterflies, striped trousers and white sandals."}],[{"start":120.44,"text":"“I never asked if you eat fish,” she says, adding that she likes to come here for one-on-one meetings. I assure her that I do. For starters, I decide on mussels, while Endersby chooses octopus. “Very climate-change appropriate,” she says — a reference to the surge in Britain’s octopus population because of rising sea temperatures. We both choose the whole fish of the day and I order a glass of the house white."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":144.92,"text":"Since her appointment, Endersby, 56, has had the tricky task of running the Met Office at a time when climate science has come under attack and politicians dismiss net zero, despite the country facing more extreme weather. The agency’s latest modelling suggests that by the middle of the century, Britain could endure long stretches of 40C days, with temperatures hitting 45C."}],[{"start":168,"text":"At the same time, the accuracy of its forecasts remains under scrutiny, and tourist attractions such as Chester Zoo have recently criticised the use of a single daily icon on the Met Office’s app, arguing that a rain symbol results in thousands of pounds of lost visitor income."}],[{"start":183.36,"text":"“We’re measured on our accuracy, we’re independently assessed on the quality of our warnings, we are always trying to make them better and we’re rarely, but occasionally, plain wrong,” she says."}],[{"start":194.56,"text":"Endersby grew up in London, where her father was a British Gas acoustic engineer and her mother, who read classics at Oxford, was a housewife. Her parents “started at different ends of the social spectrum [but] bonded over a relentless intellectualism”, she says."}],[{"start":209.74,"text":"She studied natural sciences at Cambridge, backed by scholarships from the Women Into Science and Engineering initiative and British Gas, where she worked after leaving university. Most of her career, however, was spent at what became the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence."}],[{"start":227.92,"text":"Over 25 years, Endersby worked her way up from being an armour expert to the board, including overseeing the cyber and intelligence division, where she dealt with AI and big data long before they became today’s buzzwords. “My publication list is really rubbish, because all my best work was classified,” she says with a laugh."}],[{"start":245.8,"text":"By now we are tucking into our starters. The mussels, from St Austell in Cornwall, are a delicious but slightly messy choice. “My octopus is lovely,” Endersby says. “I need to learn to cook it because it’s obviously going to be part of the local catch [as sea temperatures increase] . . .  I mean the royal ‘we’ because it’s my husband who’s the chef.”"}],[{"start":266.96,"text":"The couple met as teenage summer students at British Gas. They have been married for 35 years. “If I went back and told my 18-year-old self something, it would be, ‘He’s a keeper,’” she says, her eyes lighting up. “He’s taken most of the career penalties that normally fall on women,” including becoming a stay-at-home father when their two children were young."}],[{"start":287.88,"text":"It seems quite a pivot from defence to meteorology, I say. The MoD has to ensure that infrastructure and machinery such as tanks and planes, as well as the workforce, can operate in both the current and future climate, she counters. Anyway, what the Met Office does is so diverse that no one can be an expert in all of it, she says, adding that she brought tech expertise to the role. Also, she was a closet meteorologist. “I was geeky enough that I had 10 years of rain-gauge records from my back garden.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":288.38,"text":"The Galley"}],[{"start":288.88,"text":"41 Fore Street, Topsham, Devon EX3 0HU"}],[{"start":289.38,"text":"Three-course set menu x2 £91"}],[{"start":289.88,"text":"- St Austell mussels"}],[{"start":290.38,"text":"- Wild Cornish octopus"}],[{"start":290.88,"text":"- Megrim sole x2 (plus £20 supplement)"}],[{"start":291.38,"text":"- Lychee île flottante"}],[{"start":291.88,"text":"Fever Tree tonic £3.50"}],[{"start":292.38,"text":"London Light 0% gin £4.20"}],[{"start":634.64,"text":"Glass of The Galley Blanc £5.25"}],[{"start":635.14,"text":"Tea £4.25"}],[{"start":635.64,"text":"Espresso £4.50"}],[{"start":636.14,"text":"Total inc service £149.29"}],[{"start":636.64,"text":"The Met Office is the world’s second-oldest national meteorological service, and holds the longest-running weather data in the world. The monthly records for central England date back to 1659 and daily records to 1772."}],[{"start":637.14,"text":"But when Endersby joined, two infamous events lingered over the institution: the BBC’s decision in 2016 to move to private forecaster MeteoGroup, and weather presenter Michael Fish in 1987 dismissing the risk of a hurricane only for a deadly storm to hit the country. The BBC’s move was a “big reputational deal”, but, she tells me, the broadcaster is currently in the process of switching back to the Met Office."}],[{"start":701.04,"text":"A storm akin to 1987 is unlikely to be missed now, she argues, but “localised” weather events, such as thunderstorms, remain more challenging to forecast. Still, forecasting has improved “hugely”, she says. “Your five-day forecast now is as good as your one-day forecast was 50 years ago.” The Met Office is consistently recognised in the top two forecast providers globally, according to its website, with its most recent numbers showing that its one-day forecasts for maximum temperatures were 95 per cent accurate."}],[{"start":701.54,"text":"Much of the improvement has been driven by bigger computers, with the Met Office investing £1.2bn in a supercomputer. But, Endersby says, “We’re now suffering from the end of Moore’s Law” — the observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years, while the cost of computers reduces."}],[{"start":702.04,"text":"“So we don’t get a free ride of bigger computers. We’ve got to find new ways to be clever and AI looks like it’s going to be one of those ways.”"}],[{"start":702.54,"text":"We pause briefly as our main courses arrive. The megrim sole, drizzled with garlic butter and capers, is perfectly cooked. “It’s a bit of a local delicacy,” Endersby says. “They’ve taken its head off, but it’s bug ugly.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":703.04,"text":"We return to AI. FastNet, the AI model developed by the Met Office and the Alan Turing Institute, is “now giving results comparable to our global weather model”. But there are issues. “In our physics models, you can never get a steep pressure gradient [when atmospheric pressure changes rapidly over a short distance] without an associated wind, but in AI you can,” she says."}],[{"start":703.54,"text":"She adds that AI forecasting has “lowered the barrier to entry” for private weather companies, meaning that the Met Office could face more competition. Its strategy, she says, is to “end up with the best possible blend of AI and numerical forecasting”, combining the “physical validity and reality of the physics modelling” with the “efficiency and speed of the AI modelling”."}],[{"start":704.04,"text":"The conversation turns to the political pushback against climate action from the US to the UK, where Reform and the Conservatives have pledged to ditch net zero targets. Endersby is careful in her reply. “We would hope to inform any government that’s in power with the best impartial science to help them make better decisions.”"}],[{"start":704.54,"text":"When she went for the Met Office job in 2018, she believed her tenure “would cover the period where the person in the street could really detect climate change for themselves. And I was right,” she says, but rather than people getting “on board with wanting to do something”, as she had expected, it has “provoked a sort of backlash”."}],[{"start":705.04,"text":"Under President Donald Trump, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — the US agency tasked with forecasting weather and monitoring climatic conditions, where hundreds of jobs have been cut — have been reluctant to link extreme weather with global warming. Trump has called climate change a “con job”."}],[{"start":705.54,"text":"Endersby says the science is clear that the climate is changing. “That’s not an area where I have to be politically impartial, that’s an area where I need to be scientifically impartial.”"}],[{"start":706.04,"text":"Even at UN climate talks and at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the UN’s global weather and climate body, Endersby says, there has been pushback against climate science. But “you can’t lobby physics”, she adds. “You can take the words away, but the climate still exists and climate change still exists.”"}],[{"start":706.54,"text":"Data from the Met Office, as well as from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, NOAA in the US, the Japan Meteorological Agency and others, is used by the WMO to build a comprehensive global picture of annual weather and changes to the long-term climate."}],[{"start":707.04,"text":"Yet still the growing disinformation is a worry. “People used to criticise our science and now the science is so blindingly obvious, so we’ve started to get criticism of the data,” Endersby says."}],[{"start":707.54,"text":"Despite pushback elsewhere, she says businesses are paying closer attention. In recent years, many banks and asset managers have rolled back climate efforts. But she says her work with the financial sector — largely with regulators such as the Bank of England and marketplaces such as Lloyd’s of London, where they look at “reasonable worst-case scenarios” — has been “very encouraging”."}],[{"start":708.04,"text":"“They might not be very altruistic, but they’re very rational, they are very numerate and they think long term, and any of those things drive you to making sensible choices about adaptation and risk and the climate,” Endersby says. “People know properties are going to be uninsurable.”"}],[{"start":708.54,"text":"The Met Office is also working with the National Energy System Operator, integrating into grid management real-time weather forecasts — to help understand likely demand for power or the availability of wind and solar — and long-term climate scenarios. “A lot of our power lines are over-specced for cold and under-specced for heat,” she says, “designed to withstand the icy winters of the 1960s” but not “multiple days about 40C”."}],[{"start":709.04,"text":"Our plates have been cleared and we weigh up dessert. I decide on a lychee Île flottante and tea, while Endersby orders coffee."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":696.84,"text":"Endersby is Exeter Cathedral’s canon scientist, a lay position where she tries “to bring a useful interpretation” of science to the church. A recent talk she had been due to give on AI was postponed, she says, adding by way of explanation: “I’m just returning to work after having been treated for cancer.”"}],[{"start":715.2,"text":"She tells me she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, working from home through chemotherapy. “Then I had a couple of surgeries and I did have to stop.” She returned to the office only weeks ago. Radiotherapy starts this month."}],[{"start":726.36,"text":"As our drinks arrive, our conversation shifts to weather modification or geoengineering, the idea of deliberately manipulating the Earth’s natural systems. Countries such as China already use cloud seeding, a technique to encourage rain. Some scientists and venture capitalists are looking at even more controversial measures, such as solar radiation modification, aimed at cooling the Earth by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space."}],[{"start":753.84,"text":"There have been accusations of weather manipulation on social media in the UK, but Endersby stresses that the Met Office does not engage in weather or climate modification. She backs modelling to understand geoengineering but argues it’s “something you should do as an absolute last resort”."}],[{"start":770.68,"text":"“Geoengineering is not a panacea, even if you could make it work. It won’t stop the oceans acidifying. Once you start, you’ve got to carry on,” she says, arguing that if it were used successfully and suddenly stopped, the climate would heat up even more rapidly."}],[{"start":785.36,"text":"Ultimately it is a distraction from what needs to be done, which includes the rapid rollout of renewables, she argues. “My view is we know how to deal with the climate crisis, we have the technologies, we just need to deploy them at scale, rather than try to engineer our way out of it another way.”"}],[{"start":802.04,"text":"Right now, the world is far off track for the Paris Agreement goal to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2C and ideally to 1.5C above the pre-industrial level. The world has already warmed by about 1.3C to 1.4C. “Our chances of staying within 1.5C are slim,” says Endersby. Missing the target will have big ramifications everywhere, including the UK."}],[{"start":826.76,"text":"This summer, the WMO confirmed that El Niño, one of the Earth’s most powerful naturally occurring climate patterns, is currently under way and warned it was likely to intensify. The event typically worsens both drought and heavy rainfall, while also increasing the risks of heatwaves on land and at sea. Some scientists have warned of a “super El Niño”."}],[{"start":846.52,"text":"“A very strong El Niño this year” would probably drive global temperatures even higher next year, says Endersby, “a temporary spike on top of a rising trend”."}],[{"start":855.64,"text":"In the UK, a report from Met Office scientists and others said the number of days above 30C and nights above 18C had more than quadrupled for Greater London for the most recent decade, compared with 1961 to 1990. Endersby says: “This feels like a very unusual summer. But there is not going to be a usual summer because we’re in such a rapidly changing climate.”"}],[{"start":879.76,"text":"The country reached 40C for the first time in 2022, a record that the Met Office had forecast and warned would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human-induced climate change."}],[{"start":890.72,"text":"“I was standing in our operations centre [in July 2022], watching the temperatures tick up,” Endersby says. “On the one hand you see it happen and you want to cheer because it’s on your shoulders and you’re right. And on the other hand you want to weep because it shouldn’t be happening.”"}],[{"start":907.84,"text":"The restaurant, lively throughout our lunch, has just emptied out. I pay and we walk to the railway station. She is glad to get some exercise, she says, after being cooped up during her cancer treatment."}],[{"start":920.4,"text":"Just before we bid each other farewell, she shows me a bag made by the Met Office’s crafting group after her diagnosis. There is a felt lightning bolt and multicoloured rainbow. And as Britain endures what looks set to be its hottest summer on record, at least for now, she points to another addition her colleagues included: a smiling sun."}],[{"start":939.92,"text":"Attracta Mooney is the FT’s climate correspondent"}],[{"start":943,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":955.32,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1784985137_1796.mp3"}