Educated in physics to PhD level at Oxford, I specialise in atmospheric turbulence, jet streams, fluid dynamics, numerical modelling, and climate change, with a focus on weather-sensitive applications including aviation. I am particularly interested in the impacts of climate change on aviation, including the prospect of more turbulence. The citation for my £70,000 Philip Leverhulme Prize describes me as “an innovative and highly original researcher [who] has made significant contributions to dynamical meteorology and oceanography”. I recently led a project that won the Times Higher Education Awards STEM Research Project of the Year.
My research achievements to date include: co-developing an award-winning aviation turbulence forecasting algorithm that has made billions of passenger journeys smoother and safer; discovering that climate change could treble the amount of severe turbulence in the atmosphere; and inventing a numerical time integration scheme that is now standard textbook material and has measurably improved dozens of atmosphere, ocean, and climate models worldwide.
Described as “one of the world’s most influential and respected atmospheric scientists” on the front page of the Boston Globe, I am an award-winning science communicator, regularly giving public lectures, speaking at science festivals such as New Scientist Live, debating climate change sceptics, and appearing in the media (see playlist of TV interviews above). I have been quoted on the front page of the New York Times, I have explained the Coriolis force in The Times, and Chelsea Clinton and Cher have tweeted about my research. I am a consultant to Guinness World Records, advising on extreme atmospheric events for the famous series of best-selling annual reference books.