Doctoral advisor C.D. Walshaw Doctoral students Alice Bows | Name Joanna Haigh Role Professor | |
 | ||
Born Joanna Dorothy Haigh May 7, 1954 (age 69) ( 1954-05-07 ) Alma mater Somerville College, Oxford (MA)Imperial College London (MSc)St Cross College, Oxford (DPhil) Thesis Experiments with a two-dimentional model of the general circulation (1980) Known for Work on solar variability Notable awards Appleton Medal and Prize, Royal Society, Order of the British Empire | ||
Professor joanna haigh on cop21 benefits other than co2 reduction
Joanna Dorothy Haigh, (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. She is Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. She is a former head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Contents
- Professor joanna haigh on cop21 benefits other than co2 reduction
- Career connection dr joanna haigh on solar variability and climate full video
- Early life and education
- Academic career
- Research
- Views on climate change
- Honours
- References
Career connection dr joanna haigh on solar variability and climate full video
Early life and education
Haigh was born on 7 May 1954. She was educated at Hitchin Girls' School, then an all-girls grammar school in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She studied physics at the University of Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; as per tradition, this was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA (Oxon)) degree. This was followed by a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Meteorology at Imperial College London. She returned to Oxford to complete a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in Atmospheric Physics under the supervision of C.D. Walshaw. This was awarded in 1980 and her doctoral thesis was titled "Experiments with a two-dimensional model of the general circulation".
Academic career
She is Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London. Since 2014, she has been co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. She was previously head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College, serving between 2009 and 2014.
Research
Haigh is known for her work on solar variability, and also works on radiative transfer, stratosphere-troposphere coupling and climate modelling. She has been Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences and a Lead Author on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. In 2004 she received the Institute of Physics' Charles Chree Medal and Prize and in 2010 the Royal Meteorological Society Adrian Gill prize for her work on solar variability and its effects on climate.
Views on climate change
Haigh conforms to the mainstream scientific view, that anthropogenic carbon emissions lead to increased greenhouse warming. She stated in June 2016 that if current levels of carbon dioxide emissions continued unabated, they would lead to a 5 °C increase over pre-industrial climate by the end of the next century, and that achieving a zero temperature rise would require a complete cessation of carbon emissions. She also stated that she was optimistic about the future, following the COP21 conference, but later, when Donald Trump became president of the United States, she said: "If Trump does what he said he'd do, and others follow suit, my gut feeling is that I'm scared. Very scared."
Honours
In the 2013 New Year Honours, Haigh was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to physics".
Haigh is a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society; she is now a vice-president. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Her nomination read:
Distinguished for her scientific leadership in the area of solar influences on the middle atmosphere and for her modelling of how these effects can modulate tropospheric circulations and so propagate to Earth's surface. Her expertise in modelling atmospheric radiative transfer allowed the development of computationally fast but accurate radiative transfer schemes some of which are now in use by climate modelling groups across the world. By proposing and demonstrating an entirely novel mechanism for solar influence on climate she has allowed proper allowance to be made for the small and subtle, yet revealing effects.