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.
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 and in investigating the electrical effect of solar changes on the Earth’s and other atmospheres. 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, 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,the first published airborne measurements of the , which were undertaken in UK airspace at government request during the April 2010 flight ban, direct evidence for unexpected enhancement of ionisation in the lower atmosphere during a solar storm, and observations of charge made opportunistically within a dust layer transported to the UK by the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia.
Other work
Beyond atmospheric electricity and atmospheric measurements, Harrison conceived and led the National Eclipse Weather Experiment. This Citizen Science project associated with the 2015 solar eclipse involved up to 3500 pupils and teachers nationally, promoted through the BBC’s Stargazing Live. He subsequently edited a themed issue, 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, , through convening an international team which suggested a mechanism for its formation.
Publications
He has authored or co-authored about 300 , co-edited Planetary Atmospheric Electricity and his successful postgraduate textbook on meteorological measurements is now available in Chinese.
