Climate Scientist
Scientist researching weather and climate extremes
I am a climate scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI).
My research focuses on climate extremes - such as heavy rainfall events and heatwaves. Currently, I am investigating changes in the dynamics of extreme events with climate change.
I use observational data and large ensembles of climate models to analyse climatic extremes in both the current climate and future climate projections.
I am interested in the impacts of climate extremes on society and the environment.
I have previously worked on extreme heat at the Cabot Institute, University of Bristol; in flood risk at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency; and as a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre.
I have a PhD in Meteorology from Reading University.
After the June 2021 heatwave in western North America we search for events more extreme, assessing against the local variaility. Although June 2021 features in the top-8 events, it is not the most extreme. We show that climate model projections show heat extremes will increase in-line with changes to the climate mean-state. This work has been published in Science Advances: Thompson et al. (2022).
In Thompson et al. (2017) we presented the UNSEEN method - UNprecedented Simulated Extremes using ENsembles. We apply the method to UK rainfall to assess the likelihood of unprecedented rainfall in the current climate. The work fed into the UK Governments National Flood Resilence Review. I was awarded the RMetS Hugh Robert Mill Award for this work.
I helped produce the Climate Projections for Scotland summary, providing an overview of the UK Met Office Climate Projection, 2018. This document was produced for local government, government agencies, and public bodies to ensure common understanding of the key long-term climate trends for Scotland.
"Nothing in science has any value to society if it is not communicated" Anne Roe, 1952
I am passionate about engaging non-specialists in climate science, I am happy to speak to the media.
Some examples of my past science communication activities:
- Matte, D., Christensen, J.H., Drews, M., Sobolowski, S., Paquin, D., Lynch, A., Bremer, S., Engholm, I., Brunet, N.D., Kolstad, E.W. and Kettleborough, H., 2024. How to engage and adapt to unprecedented extremes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
- Leach, N.J., Roberts, C.D., Aengenheyster, M., Heathcote, D., Mitchell, D.M., Thompson, V., Palmer, T., Weisheimer, A. and Allen, M.R., 2024. Heatwave attribution based on reliable operational weather forecasts. Nature Communications, 15(1), p.4530.
- Cattiaux, J., Ribes, A. and Thompson, V., 2024. Searching for the most extreme temperature events in recent history. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105(1), pp.E239-E256.
- Bustamante, M., Roy, J., Ospina, D., Achakulwisut, P., Aggarwal, A., Bastos, A., Broadgate, W., Canadell, J.G., Carr, E.R., Chen, D. and Cleugh, H.A., 2023. Ten new insights in climate science 2023/2024. Global Sustainability, pp.1-58.
- Thompson, V., Mitchell, D., Hegerl, G., Collins, M., Leach, N., and Slingo, J., 2023. The most at-risk regions in the world for high-impact heatwaves. Nature Communications.
- Thompson, V., Kennedy-Asser, A., Vosper, E., Lo, E., Huntingford, C., Andrews, O., Collins, M., Hegerl, G. and Mitchell, D., 2022. The 2021 western North America heatwave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally. Science Advances.
- Viavattene, C., Fadipe, D., Old, J., Thompson, V. and Thorburn, K., 2022. Estimation of Scottish pluvial flooding Expected Annual Damages using interpolation techniques. Water, 14(3), p.308.
- Thompson, V., Dunstone, N.J., Scaife, A.A., Smith, D.M., Hardiman, S.C., Ren, H.L., Lu, B. and Belcher, S.E., 2019. Risk and dynamics of unprecedented hot months in South East China. Climate Dynamics, 52(5), pp.2585-2596.
- Ren, H.L., Scaife, A.A., Dunstone, N., Tian, B., Liu, Y., Ineson, S., Lee, J.Y., Smith, D., Liu, C., Thompson, V. and Vellinga, M., 2019. Seasonal predictability of winter ENSO types in operational dynamical model predictions. Climate Dynamics, 52(7), pp.3869-3890.
- Hermanson, L., Ren, H.L., Vellinga, M., Dunstone, N.D., Hyder, P., Ineson, S., Scaife, A.A., Smith, D.M., Thompson, V., Tian, B. and Williams, K.D., 2018. Different types of drifts in two seasonal forecast systems and their dependence on ENSO. Climate dynamics, 51(4), pp.1411-1426.
- Thompson, V., 2018. RMetS National Meeting–Seasonal forecasting for the UK and Europe. Weather, 73(3), pp.97-98.
- Kent, C., Pope, E., Thompson, V., Lewis, K., Scaife, A.A. and Dunstone, N., 2017. Using climate model simulations to assess the current climate risk to maize production. Environmental Research Letters, 12(5), p.054012.
- Thompson, V., Dunstone, N.J., Scaife, A.A., Smith, D.M., Slingo, J.M., Brown, S. and Belcher, S.E., 2017. High risk of unprecedented UK rainfall in the current climate. Nature communications, 8(1), pp.1-6.
- Zanchettin, D., Pausata, F.S., Khodri, M., Timmreck, C., Graf, H., Jungclaus, J.H., Robock, A., Rubino, A. and Thompson, V., 2017. Toward predicting volcanically-forced decadal climate variability. Past Global Changes Magazine, 25, pp.25-31.
- Smith, D.M., Booth, B.B., Dunstone, N.J., Eade, R., Hermanson, L., Jones, G.S., Scaife, A.A., Sheen, K.L. and Thompson, V., 2016. Role of volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols in the recent global surface warming slowdown. Nature Climate Change, 6(10), pp.936-940.
E-mail: vikki.thompson [at] knmi.nl
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