معرفی
Overview
Professor Paul D. Williams is a Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading's Department of Meteorology, leading the Weather Research Division. He specializes in atmospheric turbulence, jet streams, fluid dynamics, and climate change impacts on aviation. His research includes groundbreaking work on clear-air turbulence trends and climate model improvements. He has developed aviation turbulence forecasting algorithms and invented a numerical time integration scheme widely adopted in climate models.
Research Interests
Key areas include small-scale atmospheric/ocean features, clear-air turbulence dynamics, aviation meteorology, numerical modeling techniques, and stochastic parameterization. His work emphasizes the intersection of climate change and aviation safety, with a focus on turbulence prediction and jet stream behavior.
Scientific Contributions
Williams has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles, including in Nature and Geophysical Research Letters. He leads projects funded by Royal Society grants, NERC, and Leverhulme. Notable achievements include discovering climate change could triple severe turbulence and co-developing an award-winning turbulence forecasting algorithm.
Awards & Editorial Roles
- Philip Leverhulme Prize in Earth Sciences (2017)
- Times Higher Education STEM Research Project of the Year (2020)
- Editor of Meteorology and Advances in Atmospheric Sciences
Advising & Grants
Supervised multiple postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Active in securing grants totaling ~£3M annually for the Weather Research Division. Collaborates internationally on projects like improving climate models through stochastic ocean eddy parameterization.
Labs & Teams
Leads the Weather Research Division at Reading, collaborating with teams on volcanic plume measurements (VolcLab) and turbulence detection via balloon-borne instruments.
