Giles Harrison

Giles Harrison is Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, where he has served twice as Head of Department. His research work continues over 250 years of UK studies in atmospheric electricity, in its modern form an interdisciplinary topic at the intersection of aerosol and cloud physics, solar-climate and internal climate interactions, scientific sensor development and the retrieval of quantitative data from historical sources.


Education

He was educated at Marling School Stroud, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He holds doctorates from Imperial College London (PhD 1992), and the University of Cambridge (ScD 2014).

Research Activity

A major part of Harrison’s work has focused on the charging of atmospheric particles and droplets and the effect of charge on their behaviour, for which he has pioneered new instruments and methods. This has included applying early atmospheric electrical data for reconstruction of past air pollution[1] and in investigating the electrical effect of solar changes[2] on the Earth’s and other atmospheres[3]. His experimental work has clearly demonstrated the widespread presence of atmospheric charge in regions well away from thunderstorms, particularly at horizontal edges of layer clouds. Motivated by the need to increase in situ atmospheric measurements of these phenomena using sensitive balloon-carried instrumentation[4], Harrison and his co-workers have provided some unique atmospheric measurements. These include turbulence data able to be applied beyond Earth to Titan’s atmosphere[5],the first published airborne measurements of the Icelandic volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajökull, which were undertaken in UK airspace at government request during the April 2010 flight ban[6], direct evidence for unexpected enhancement of ionisation in the lower atmosphere during a solar storm[7], and observations of charge made opportunistically within a dust layer transported to the UK by the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia[8].

Other work

Beyond atmospheric electricity and atmospheric measurements, Harrison conceived and led the National Eclipse Weather Experiment [9]. This Citizen Science project associated with the 2015 solar eclipse involved up to 3500 pupils and teachers nationally[10], promoted through the BBC’s Stargazing Live[11]. He subsequently edited a themed issue[12], bringing together new findings in “eclipse meteorology”. He also contributed to the successful campaign of the Cloud Appreciation Society to persuade the World Meteorological Organisation to classify the first new cloud since 1951, asperitas, through convening an international team which suggested a mechanism for its formation[13].


Publications

He has authored or co-authored about 300 papers, co-edited Planetary Atmospheric Electricity [14] and his successful postgraduate textbook on meteorological measurements[15] is now available in Chinese.

Recognition

Harrison was elected to the Academia Europea in 2015. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. In 2011 he was the Bill Bright lecturer at the International Electrostatics Conference and in 2016 he was awarded the Edward Appleton Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics.[16] He chairs the Royal Meteorological Society's Special Interest Group on atmospheric electricity and serves on the Editorial Board of Environmental Research Letters. He is a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bath and Oxford.

gollark: The first one should just require installing ImageMagick or something.
gollark: Also, search seems to be broken, it always returns no results.
gollark: I just got "Error creating thumbnail: /bin/bash: /usr/bin/convert: No such file or directory Error code: 127" after uploading a file on the wiki?
gollark: Amazing how the prices keep falling like crazy.
gollark: No, you actually can get a 240GB SSD for £20 nowadays.

References
  1. Ravilious, Kate (2002-09-12). "Deciphering the sparks". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  2. www.newscientist.com https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727793-100-the-sun-joins-the-climate-club/. Retrieved 2019-11-07. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. "Secrets of Neptune's atmosphere". Cosmos Magazine. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  4. "Professor Giles Harrison: finding novel ways to study the natural world".
  5. "NASA - Fasten Your Seat Belts, Turbulence Ahead - Lessons From Titan". www.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  6. "Volcanic ash".
  7. Nicoll, K. A.; Harrison, R. G. (2014-06-02). "Synopsis: Unexpected Impact from Medium-Sized Solar Flare". Physics. 112 (22): 225001. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.225001. PMID 24949773.
  8. "Dust plume in 'red sun' event was highly charged". Physics World. 2018-06-25. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  9. "Philosophical Transactions A: The 2015 solar eclipse | Publishing blog | Royal Society". blogs.royalsociety.org. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  10. Portas, Antonio M.; Barnard, Luke; Scott, Chris; Harrison, R. Giles (2016-09-28). "The National Eclipse Weather Experiment: use and evaluation of a citizen science tool for schools outreach". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 374 (2077): 20150223. doi:10.1098/rsta.2015.0223. PMC 5004053. PMID 27550761.
  11. Stargazing Live: Eclipse data collectors wanted - BBC News School Report, 2015-02-23, retrieved 2019-11-07
  12. "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences: Vol 374, No 2077". royalsocietypublishing.org. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  13. "Science Explains "Rough and Chaotic" Cloud Feature". Eos. Retrieved 2019-11-07.
  14. Planetary Atmospheric Electricity | François Leblanc | Springer. Space Sciences Series of ISSI. Springer. 2008. ISBN 9780387876634.
  15. Harrison, R. G. (R. Giles), author. (2015-01-20). Meteorological measurements and instrumentation. ISBN 9781118745809. OCLC 903279597.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. Physics, Institute of. "2016 Appleton Medal and prize of the Institute of Physics". www.iop.org. Retrieved 2016-12-30.
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