Julian Charles Roland Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton (born 5 September 1941) is a British

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...

who was the Director General and Chief Executive of the British

Meteorological Office The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

from 1992 to 1997. He was made a

Life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...

of the Labour Party by

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...

in 2000 where he sat until 30 October 2021. He was the leader on the Labour group of

Cambridge City Council Cambridge City Council is the local authority for Cambridge, a non-metropolitan district with city status in the United Kingdom, city status in Cambridgeshire, England. The council has been under Labour Party (UK), Labour majority control since ...

in the 1970s.

Life

Hunt is the son of diplomat Roland Hunt and Pauline Garnett. The Hunt family were

goldsmith A goldsmith is a Metalworking, metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Modern goldsmiths mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, they have also made cutlery, silverware, platter (dishware), plat ...

s and

silversmith A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exact synonyms, as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are (or were, at least) largely the same but differed in that t ...

s in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; John Samuel Hunt (1785–1865) being in business with his uncle-by-marriage,

Paul Storr Paul Storr (baptised 28 October 1770 in London – 18 March 1844 in London) was an English goldsmith and silversmith working in the Neoclassical style, Neoclassical and other styles during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Hi ...

; also descended from John Samuel Hunt was

John Hunt, Baron Hunt of Fawley John Henderson Hunt, Baron Hunt of Fawley (3 July 1905 – 28 December 1987) was a British general practitioner (GP) who, in 1952, co-founded the College of General Practitioners. In 1967 the royal prefix was approved and the college was renamed ...

. Hunt is Professor of

Climate modelling Numerical climate models (or climate system models) are mathematical models that can simulate the interactions of important drivers of climate. These drivers are the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. Scientists use climate models to stu ...

in the Department of Space and Climate Physics and Department of Earth Sciences at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. Hunt was educated at

Westminster School Westminster School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Westminster, London, England, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. It descends from a charity school founded by Westminster Benedictines before the Norman Conquest, as do ...

and went on to study Mechanical Sciences at

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...

, where he is now a fellow, and gained a first class honours degree in 1963. In 1967 he was awarded a PhD on Aspects of

Magnetohydrodynamics In physics and engineering, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD; also called magneto-fluid dynamics or hydromagnetics) is a model of electrically conducting fluids that treats all interpenetrating particle species together as a single Continuum ...

from Cambridge. In 1989, he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

. Hunt was created a

life peer In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the D ...

as Baron Hunt of Chesterton, Chesterton in the

County of Cambridge Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, Northampton ...

shire on 5 May 2000. He is the father of historian and former Member of Parliament for

Stoke-on-Trent Central Stoke-on-Trent Central is a constituency in Staffordshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Gareth Snell of the Labour Party, who had previously represented the constituency between 2017 and 2019. He succe ...

Tristram Hunt Tristram Julian William Hunt, (born 31 May 1974) is a British historian, broadcast journalist and former politician who has been Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2017. He served as the Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Sto ...

, medical doctor Matilda and journalist and novelist Jemima Hunt. Hunt is the great-nephew of noted meteorologist

Lewis Fry Richardson Lewis Fry Richardson, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (11 October 1881 – 30 September 1953) was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and Pacifism, pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather ...

Meteorological Office

He followed Sir John Houghton as Director-General and Chief Executive of the

in 1992, consequently being elected to the Executive Committee of the

World Meteorological Organisation The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. The WMO originated from the Interna ...

. In 1997 he left the Met Office and was replaced by Peter Ewins. In recent years he has warned that the pattern of Asian

monsoons A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annual latitudinal oscil ...

could be fundamentally altered unless there is a concerted effort to check

greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect. This contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (), from burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum, oil, and natural gas, is the main cause of climate chan ...

in the area. He is chairman of Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants Ltd.

References

External links

Julian Hunt , UK Parliament

Julian Hunt , Royal Society

Julian Hunt , The Guardian

Interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 1 May and 3 June 2009 (video)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, Julian 1941 births Living people British climatologists British meteorologists Companions of the Order of the Bath Hunt of Chesterton Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of University College London People educated at Westminster School, London Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge People from Chesterton, Cambridge Life peers created by Elizabeth II Peers retired under the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 Jay–Garnett family