An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Lewis Blunn

Lewis works to improve the representation of urban areas in next-generation high-resolution weather models.

Areas of expertise

  • Urban climate

  • Sub-km weather modelling

  • Machine learning

  • Boundary layer turbulence and dispersion

  • Urban canopy modelling

Publications by Lewis Blunn

Current activities

Lewis is currently working on the Urban-scale modelling project. The goal being to deliver a 100 m scale ensemble weather forecasting capability, for enhanced probabilistic prediction of high impact weather, such as thunderstorms and urban heatwaves. He is leading the incorporation of cutting-edge urban surface description datasets and the development of urban surface exchange parametrisations (e.g., anthropogenic heat emissions), so that more accurate and finer detail urban forecasts can be made. As part of the Paris 2024 Olympics Research Demonstration Project, he is evaluating 100 m scale thunderstorm and heatwave forecasts from different weather centres. The learnings will inform the development strategy of next-generation weather models. He is researching machine learning downscaling techniques to reduce the computational cost of 100 m scale weather models.

Career background

Lewis joined the Met Office in 2021 and works in the Urban-scale modelling team. Before this, he worked as a post-doc for a year in Prof. Sue Grimmond's urban group at the University of Reading. During this period he incorporated the SPARTACUS vertically distributed radiation scheme in SUEWS urban surface exchange scheme, conducted the SUEWS simulations for the Urban-PLUMBER urban surface exchange model intercomparison project, and built an anthropogenic heat emissions dataset for Colombo, Sri Lanka, to inform heat stress studies.

He completed his PhD at the University of Reading (2016-2020) on "Characterising Mixing and Pollution Transport in the Urban Boundary Layer". This involved developing a reduced ("box") model for pollution concentration in London to understand the influence of meteorological factors on pollution concentration, running the Met Office Unified Model at kilometre to hectometre scales (across the convective boundary layer grey zone) to determine the impact of grid length on vertical mixing representation and pollution dispersion, and developing a turbulence model for vertically distributed urban canopy schemes.

Before embarking on a career in meteorology he completed an integrated masters in physics at the University of Manchester (2009-2013) and worked in industry as a geophysicist where he processed and analysed seismic data (2013-2016).