About the seminar

The illustrated talk outlines the development of modern meteorology and its dependence on computers and a global perspective, highlighting the key milestones. The succession of computers at the Met Office, and the necessary ancillary technologies, such as message switches, graphical output devices and a global infrastructure, are then described, interspersed with a few personal anecdotes.

About the speaker

Chris Little first programmed on a KDF9 in a gap year before university, trained as a mathematician and became a professional meteorologist by accident several decades ago, and spent a lot of time programming supercomputers with various Fortrans, first analysing and then visualising data. He has also spent a surprising amount of time in international standardisation, projects and collaboration. He is currently an IT Fellow at the Met Office and co-chair of some standardisation Working Groups in the Open Geospatial Consortium.