Your day-to-day duties may include:

• gathering and analysing data from the atmosphere, oceans and land
• creating computer models to simulate the effects of changes to climate
• designing and building scientific instruments and sensors
• studying past climates to understand what might happen in the future
• monitoring ice packs, sea levels and temperatures
• looking at how global climate affects regional weather patterns
• attending conferences and publishing research findings
• investigating ways to tackle climate change
• advising policy makers
• teaching

You could work in a laboratory or at a university.

Your working environment may be outdoors some of the time.

You could specialise in an area of climate science, for example polar research, rainfall patterns or ocean changes. You might do this through research and teaching at a university, or by working for a government department.

You could also work as a palaeoclimatologist, studying previous variations in climate and how the Earth adapted to these.

Other career options include working as a consultant for science publishers or broadcasters.

You may be able to apply for chartered environmentalist status. You can find out more about being a chartered environmentalist from the Society for the Environment.