Julian Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton

Julian Charles Roland Hunt, Baron Hunt of Chesterton, (5 September 1941 – 20 April 2026) was a British meteorologist who was the Director General and Chief Executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992 to 1997. He was made a Life peer of the Labour Party by Tony Blair in 2000 where he sat until 30 October 2021. He was the leader on the Labour group of Cambridge City Council in the 1970s.

Early life and education Julian Charles Roland Hunt was born in Ootacamund, a hill station in Madras Province, British India, on 5 September 1941. His father was Roland Hunt, later a diplomat but then a magistrate in the Indian Civil Service, and Pauline Hunt (daughter of Maxwell Garnett). and Douglas Jay, a Labour minister, who was married to Pauline Hunt's sister, was influential in matters of politics. His grandfather Maxwell Garnett was an expert on the physics of colour when a fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, following Hunt’s great grandfather William Garnett who worked with James Clerk Maxwell in the early years of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. The Hunt family were goldsmiths and silversmiths in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; John Samuel Hunt (1785–1865) being in business with his uncle-by-marriage, Paul Storr; also descended from John Samuel Hunt was John Hunt, Baron Hunt of Fawley. His family returned to the United Kingdom from India following the end of the Second World War. and graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1963 with a first class honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.

Career Academic career In 1966, Hunt was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He undertook post-doctoral research as a Fulbright Scholar at Cornell University in 1967. From 1992, while director general of the Meteorological Office, he was an honorary professor at Cambridge. He was also honorary director of UCL's Lighthill Institute of Mathematical Sciences from 2003 to 2006. He retired from UCL in 2008, and was made an emeritus professor.

Meteorological Office Hunt followed Sir John Houghton as Director-General and Chief Executive of the Meteorological Office in 1992, consequently being elected to the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organisation. In 1997 he left the Met Office and was replaced by Peter Ewins.

In later years he warned that the pattern of Asian monsoons could be fundamentally altered unless there is a concerted effort to check greenhouse gas emissions. He was chairman of Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants Ltd.

Politics While in the United States as postgraduate researcher, Hunt and his wife became interested in the anti-Vietnam War movement and took part in the October 1967 March on the Pentagon. He made his maiden speech in the House of Lords on 7 June 2000 during a debate on coastal erosion.

Personal life In 1965, he married Marylla Shephard, daughter of the painter and art teacher Rupert Shephard and later stepdaughter to Nicolette Devas, author of Two Flamboyant Fathers. Together they had three children: novelist Jemima; medical doctor Matilda; and historian, director of the Victoria & Albert Museum group and former Member of Parliament, Sir Tristram Hunt.

Hunt died from complications of vascular dementia on 20 April 2026, at the age of 84.