I'm Peter Taylor, I live in Southampton, UK, and before I retired, I was a research scientist at the National Oceanography Centre trying to determine the effect of the ocean on the atmosphere.

In my youth I studied Physics at Imperial College before doing a Ph.D. in the Oceanography Department at Southampton University. There I studied the part of the atmosphere that is directly affected by the ocean - usually from the surface to the top of the lowest clouds. I joined the National Institute of Oceanography in Surrey and was involved in calibration of the first oceanographic satellite, SeaSat, in a collaboration with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasedena.

In more recent years I worked at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton doing research on the transfers of heat, water vapour, carbon dioxide, and momentum, between the atmosphere and ocean. We were particularly interested in high wind conditions; the photo shows me reading an Assman psychrometer during a November storm out in the Canadian Grand Banks area of the North Atlantic! Within the World Climate Research Programme I worked on trying to improve the weather observations taken on merchant ships. For that and my other work, in 2006 I was awarded the Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society.

So I'm not a proper meteorologist... but my research career has given me experience in making meteorological measurements - particularly over the sea! The meteorological instrumentation I was given on my retirement forms the core of the met station I now operate on my jetty.

One of my main hobbies is sailing and I own a Seafly dinghy which is why I set up the "Seafly Memories" web site; but you can read about that elsewhere!