Julia Mary Slingo DBE, FRS, HonFInstP[1] (née Walker; born 13 December 1950) is a British meteorologist and climate scientist.

[6][14] In 1985 she left the Met Office and, after a year at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)[2] in Reading, UK, Dame Julia moved in 1986 to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the USA.

While at NCAR she was awarded in 1989 a PhD in atmospheric physics from the University of Bristol, for a thesis completed through a series of published papers.

[14] In 1990, Slingo returned to the UK, to join the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, where she founded a group researching into tropical climate.

More recently, she has also been investigating the impacts of changes on water resources and crop production, and the need to better represent the hydrological cycle in climate models.

[7] In March 2012, Slingo said that a reduction in Arctic sea ice caused by climate change was possibly linked to colder and drier winter weather in the UK.

[21] Slingo was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008 for services to environmental and climate science.

[22] She was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to weather and climate science.