Diagram Monkey

I am John Kennedy. I’m a climate scientist with a background in physics and currently work for the World Meteorological Organization as head of climate information.

Prior to this, I was self employed. While self-employed, I worked on the WMO State of the Global Climate 2025 (and others), a set of scientific illustrations, quality control of marine data, and developed the WMO Climate Dashboard.

Between 2003 and 2022, I worked at the Met Office on the development of climate data sets with a particular focus on quantification of uncertainty and the usability of uncertainty information. I was the lead author for the HadSST3 and HadSST4 data sets. These data sets were used in the HadCRUT4, HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Kadow global temperature datasets widely used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment report. I also developed the sea-surface temperature component of the HadISST2 data set used in the ERA5 generation of ECMWF reanalyses and maintained the widely used HadISST1 data set. A quality control system I developed for marine data was used in the creation of these datasets and underpins the Copernicus marine in situ data service as well as the marine component of the HadISDH humidity data set. I was work-package lead on the Horizon 2020 EUSTACE project and I am on the expert advisory board of the NERC GloSAT project. I’ve also done work for the ESA SST CCI, including developing the code used for SST dataset inter-comparisons in the Climate Assessment Reports.

Since 2003, I have also been active in climate monitoring, writing seasonal, annual, and ad hoc monitoring reports for policy makers, as well as annual contributions to the BAMS State of the Climate report as author (on global temperature, sea surface temperature and the regional chapter on Europe) and reviewer (of the global section) and writing an annual series of articles on “Global and Regional Climate in 20**” published in Weather between 2004 and 2022. I was scientific coordinator and lead author for the WMO State of the Global Climate report for 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 and co-lead the WMO Expert Team on Monitoring and Communicating Climate Variability and Change that oversees the WMO’s global and regional State of the Climate reports. I was also co-lead of the WMO Expert Team on Climate Monitoring and Assessment which, along with the State of the Climate reports, was responsible for writing and updating guidance on monitoring-related topics including Guidelines on the Definition and Characterization of Extreme Weather and Climate Events. I was formerly lead of the short-lived Expert Team on the WMO Climate Statement, lead of the Task Team on National Climate Monitoring Products (which developed guidance, software and instructions for calculating – no surprise – National Climate Monitoring Products).

I developed a system for creating and managing automated dashboards for displaying climate data for the Met Office (key indicators, extremes, sea level) and WMO (key indicators, regional temperatures). The Met Office dashboards were intended to provide easy access and accessible scientific background on key indicators for policy makers. The WMO dashboards (code) were devised to support production of the global and regional State of the Climate reports. Both are built on a light-weight data management system for handling hundreds of small datasets.

The above work was carried out in a mixture of programming languages with software developed solo and as part of a team using various workflows. Chiefly, I worked in Python and IDL with substantial additional work in Fortran, Perl, and SQL as well as projects in C++, Java, and Javascript. I’ve produced a variety of webpages with HTML and CSS.

When not sciencing, I do the following things with great enthusiasm but varying degrees of success and regularity:

• Writing, including this blog. I suppose that’s still quite sciencey. Even when it’s about new shoes or terrible restaurants, science is still lurking in the background.
• Drawing and illustration both technical and non-serious-technical. Made in a variety of software packages (Inkscape, Krita, Blender, Affinity Designer) as well as different physical media.
• 3D computer graphics animation made using Blender.
• Garden according to a vague but well-meant organic philosophy whose efficacy is hard to gauge because every summer I’ve had a garden has been appalling for some reason (too hot and dry; too wet and cold; then too cold and dry followed by too hot and dry; then too cold and wet until mid summer).
• Engrave glass
• Embroider
• Paint
• Play computer games⁴
• Crochet
• Read
• Climb³
• Build non-traditional nativity scenes
• Cook⁵

All posts, pages, views and opinions written here by me are my own. This is not, sadly, a promise of novelty: it’s a disclaimer. Except for stuff in the comments: that’s nothing to do with me. I reserve the right to not publish your comment. Publication of comments might not happen immediately as I only check in once every few days.

I reserve the right to change my opinions too. Some might find that disturbing or else believe that they have somehow caught me in a contradiction.

I also reserve the right to exercise a sense of humour without employing smileys. Some might find that disturbing or else believe that they have somehow caught me in a contradiction.

Given my proven ability to sow confusion with a mere 140² characters on Twitter (as @micefearboggis) and Mastodon (as @micefearboggis on the fediscience instance) and as @micefearboggis.bsky.social on bluesky, I fully expect to be misunderstood at greater length here.

If you are going to join in, be nice. If you can’t be nice, be civil. If you can’t be civil, begone.

⁰ Occasionally known as the Diagram Monkey and micefearboggis. For the first few^c years of my career as a climate scientist, I spent a long time making plots for people more senior than myself, so naturally I was dubbed a diagram monkey. I wasn’t even the most senior diagram monkey. I was like a junior diagram monkey.

¹ BA and MSc in Natural Sciences, specialising in physics, after having dabbled in geology, and material sciences. I also studied remote sensing, shock waves and explosions and information theory besides the more traditional physics-y stuff like the dynamics^a. PhD in high-energy physics searching for particles that weren’t there^b.

² Or more, these days.

³ Technically. I haven’t climbed properly (some bouldering, occasional buildering) in over a decade. However, I have a theory that “climber” is not defined by performance of the particular activity, but is, in fact, a way of being (or character defect if you prefer) that becomes apparent during the performance of that activity^d. Also, my experience of climbing was that 95% of time spent “climbing” is spent doing other things: drinking water while meditatively gazing at the landscape, stretching, applying finger tape, walking to the crag, waiting for the lead to nerve themselves for the crux, lying exhausted on my bouldering mat and questioning my life choices. In that respect, little has changed, but the objective dangers.

⁴ A choice that mystifies my more serious colleagues, and me from time to time.

⁵ Borderline hobby this one, given one must eat to survive. Nevertheless, I obtain more from the process than mere sustenance.

^a thermo- fluid- electro- hydro- etc.

^b Probably weren’t there.

^c Several… OK, all of them. As time went on, the number of people more senior than me managed not to diminish meaningfully.

^d In a similar sense, there have always been astronauts who, until the advent of space travel, had no idea what was missing from their lives.