I am a Professorial Fellow at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) which is part of the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.  I am principlally known for the time series of hemispheric and global surface temperatures, which I help update on a monthly basis.  I have over 450 research papers over the last 45 years.  I have over 63,000 citations and an H-index of 118 on the ResearcherID system.

I have been a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society since 1992 and was on the Editorial Committee of the International Journal of Climatology until 1995.  I am currently on the editorial board of Climatic Change.  I am an elected member of Academic Europaea since 1998.

I was jointly awarded the Hugh Robert Mill Medal in 1995 by the Royal Meteorological Society for work on UK Rainfall Variability, and in 1997 the Outstanding Scientific Paper Award by the Environmental Research Laboratories / NOAA for being a coauthor on the paper "A search for Human Influences on the Thermal Structure of the Atmosphere," by Ben Santer et al. in Nature, 382, 39-46 (1996).  More recently I was awarded the first Hans Oesschger Medal from the European Geophysical Society (now the European Geosciences Union) in 2002 and the International Journal of Climatology prize of the Royal Meteorological Society for papers published in the last five years, also in 2002.  I am recognised as one of the top 0.5% of highly-cited researchers in the Geosciences field by the ISI (the institute in the US that maintains the Web of Science, where publications and citations are monitored.  I was made (2006) a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and was awarded a Reviewer's Award by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) the same year.  In 2009 I have also been made a fellow by the AGU.  In 2012 I was awarded an Honorary Degree by the University Rovira I Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). In 2016 I was an Honorary Degree from the University of Stockholm. In 2018 I became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Apart from papers on instrumental temperatures, my other main fields are climate change, detection and attribution of climate, proxy climate reconstructions, climate extremes, climate impacts, weather generators, drought and long precipitation and riverflow reconstructions for the British Isles.

• BA in Environmental Sciences, University of Lancaster (1973)
• MSc in Engineering Hydrology, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (1974)
• PhD in Hydrology, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (1977)
• Senior Research Associate, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich (1976-1994)
• Reader, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich (1994-1998)
• Professor, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich (1998-date) 

PhD Positions

Click here for current PhD opportunities in the School of Environmental Sciences. However, feel free to email me to discuss projects outside these areas and alternative sources of funding.