John Siddorn, CEO, National Oceanography Center
a staff of more than 600 and assets ranging from deep-sea research vessels to fleets of autonomous underwater and surface vehicles, NOC serves as the UK’s principal marine science body.For Siddorn, who began his career as a physical oceanographer in the 1990s and spent significant time at the UK Met Office developing coupled ocean-atmosphere models, the role at NOC is the culmination of a lifetime dedicated to understanding Earth systems.“This is the best job in the world,” Siddorn says. “What attracted me most is NOC’s ability to unite cutting-edge engineering, advanced science
NOC Expedition Marks 40 Years of Abyssal Science Project
camera system able to take images of single cell organisms from seawater samples taken every 30 minutes from the ship on its route will also be used, with plans to use artificial intelligence to enable the imaged organisms to be identified in-real time in the future.The team will also replace a Met Office monitoring buoy that supports weather forecasting and ocean monitoring at the site, including measuring carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and upper ocean.The expedition will also do its more routine work recovering and deploying a wide range of scientific instrumentation to collect water and sediment
2024 was Hottest Year on Record
of extreme air and sea surface temperatures; while other factors, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), also contributed to the unusual temperatures observed during the year.This year the following organizations involved in global climate monitoring – ECMWF, NASA, NOAA, the UK Met Office, Berkeley Earth and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), have made a concerted effort to coordinate the release of their data, highlighting the exceptional conditions experienced during 2024.Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: "All of the internationall
Green Marine UK, NOC Team on Gliders
Green Marine UK has deployed a series of underwater gliders in the North Sea to support a data-collecting exercise led by the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and the Met Office.Operating for six-month intervals, the gliders will survey ocean depths approaching 200m for a three-year period. The project aims to improve the collection and distribution of data supporting both weather and ocean forecasts.A range of measurements including salinity and temperature will be delivered to the Met Office in near real-time. It forms part of a wider program to increase the amount of observational data
Dr. Siddorn Tapped to Transform NOC Research Strategy
NOC in 2020 as Associate Director of Digital Ocean. He has championed the embedding of digital approaches to furthering science, including through the use of digital twins. He succeeds Professor Angela Hatton who is leaving the NOC after over six years in the role.Prior to NOC, Dr. Siddorn was at the Met Office where he was Head of the Ocean Forecasting R&D Department (OFRD) group and co-chair of the National Partnership for Ocean Prediction (NPOP). As Head of OFRD he had responsibility for developing models and satellite analyses for weather and climate applications. His personal research was on
New WaveNet Data Shows Record UK Sea Temperatures
water contains less oxygen, threatening marine habitats and larger fish species.It is projected that U.K. sea water temperatures will continue to rise over the coming century, with models suggesting an increase of between 0.25°C and 0.4°C per decade. The WaveNet data, which is incorporated into Met Office meteorological models, will help forecasters, local authorities, and scientists to better understand the risks and impacts of climate change on the marine environment and coastal communities
CGG Joins UK Research Assessing Ecosystem Impact of Offshore Wind Farms
and the conservation of species around offshore wind farms while also supporting wind farm developers to design long-term environmental monitoring strategies. The project will utilize data supplied by Mona Offshore Wind Ltd. (a joint venture between EnBW and BP), ENI, Ørsted, RWE, and The Met Office, among others. The £2M, four-year ECOWind-ACCELERATE project is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and The Crown Estate, with support from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of the ECOWind program.CGG will provide high-performance
AutoNaut Completes a 16-week, 4,000-mile Mission on the Atlantic continental shelf break
develop the science program. Other stakeholders became associated in the data collection program as the project developed and the route changed. These included the Irish Marine Institute, Galway Marine Institute of Technology, OSNAP and iFADO partners, NOC, CEFAS, University of Exeter, and the UK Met Office. The data collected are made freely available to all partners.The sensor fit for this deployment was loaned to AutoNaut, for which we are grateful. It comprised:Nortek Signature500 ADCP, fitted through the hullSeiche PAM, fitted to a small fin below the hull rather than as a towed arrayAande
UK Met Office Selects Sonardyne Acoustic Releases for Mooring Weather Buoys
Acoustic release transponders from Sonardyne were chosen by the UK’s Met Office to secure its network of moored buoy Marine Automatic Weather Stations (MAWS) in the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean.Sonardyne’s RT 6s and deck topside command units will be used to support deployment and retrieval of the MAWS buoys from theirlocations as far north as the Faroe-Shetland Channel and down to the southwestern approaches and the English Channel in the south.Because many of the buoys are moored in more harsh North Atlantic waters, they have to be designed to withstand extreme conditions, includingsignifi
December 2025
