A meteorological life

Marjory Roy, RSGS member and Met Office retiree

I was born and bred in Edinburgh, but my parents came from two different parts of Scotland. My mother was from Angus and my father was from the southwest. I always say I’m a cross between an Aberdeen Angus and a Belted Galloway.

I’d always been involved in outdoor activities. My family were outdoors a lot of the time, and when my brother was at university he did a course in meteorology. Then when I was looking for a subject to write about in school, he said, why not do meteorology? So that was my first interest. When I was at university, one of the subjects you could take for your final honours was meteorology. Then, after I graduated, I did a Master of Science on atmospheric ozone, long before it was a topic that was of great interest and before they discovered the ozone hole.

When I left university, I was recruited to the Met Office and joined the climate research branch. I went on to spend three years doing the forecasting, before I joined the agricultural meteorology branch where I was seconded to the Grassland Research Institute. After about four years, I was eventually posted to Edinburgh to become Superintendent of Met Office Edinburgh, the climatological office for Scotland, responsible for the running of the climatological network in Scotland and the quality control of the data. Its enquiry section answered requests for weather information for Scotland, such as insurance claims and planning data.

When I first joined the Met Office, they were just really at the beginning stages of a numerical weather prediction, and of course it’s gone from strength to strength. There used to be more emphasis on short-period forecasting. Then, as they discovered that climate change was so important, the emphasis changed completely, and interest in the old data has become so much greater.

Geography, particularly the mapping side of geography, interacts tremendously with meteorology. One of the first things you do in meteorology is you work with maps, you work with charts. You’re also very much aware of the effects of land and sea distribution and mountains on the weather. For example, off the coast of North America, particularly in the winter, the contrast between the cold of the land and the warmth of the sea is a breeding ground for depressions which will, to a large extent, cross the Atlantic.

My parents used to go to RSGS lectures, so I was always aware of the Society. I gave a talk to RSGS on mountain weather when I was still in charge of the Edinburgh Met Office, and several more talks on the Ben Nevis Observatory. I visited Antarctica with the RSGS group that went in connection with the centenary of the Scotia expedition. It was very interesting – we discovered a new uncharted rock in King Harkins Bay in South Georgia – but unfortunately that particular trip had to be cut short and we had to go back to Ushuaia because the weather was so bad. But two years later we all went again and we had absolutely brilliant weather down on the west side of Antarctica. I also went on the same ship later around Svalbard. It was really after the Scotia expedition that I was inspired to join RSGS, plus the fact it was a chance to meet up with some of the people that I met on the expedition.

I think RSGS does well to cover such an interesting variety of subjects. It’s quite good that you focus on issues that are perhaps a bit more controversial or about things that people are less aware of. I think you explore important subjects that people might not have considered. One of the things with young people is to get them involved with projects that will make a difference, especially with things like renewable energy. It’s important for young people to get involved with the positive side of what you can do. And for adults as well, we need to invest in these types of developments, because the climate change scenario provides a lot of possibilities as well as just the negativities.