News in Brief

Oxford Blueprint, 9 December 2004

A DPhil student in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics has won the Royal Astronomical Society's 2004 Blackwell Prize for the best doctoral thesis in atmospheric physics in the UK. Dr Paul Williams won for his work studying the behaviour of waves in the Earth's atmosphere. He found that small-scale fluctuations, which are widespread in the atmosphere, may have a greater impact on weather systems than previously thought, a discovery which may have important implications for accurate weather forecasting.