Professor Piers Forster
- Position: Professor of Climate Physics
- Areas of expertise: climate change; climate modelling; climate mitigation; climate risks; climate adaptation; atmospheric physics; radiative forcing; aviation and climate; climate policy, carbon budgets
- Email: P.M.Forster@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 6476
- Location: 10.24 Priestley Building
- Website: Priestley Centre for Climate Futures | Physical Climate Group | Twitter | LinkedIn | Googlescholar | Researchgate | ORCID | White Rose
Profile
Piers Forster is Professor of Physical Climate Change and founding Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds. He has played significant roles authoring Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, including the Fourth (2007), Fifth (2013) and Sixth (2021) assessment reports and the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C (2018).
As well as his research career, Piers helped establish the United Bank of Carbon, a UK charity that researches and protects trees and forests. He has several roles advising industry and government. He was appointed as a member of UK Climate Change Committee in 2019 and appointed as its Interim Chair in 2023.
Responsibilities
- Director, Priestley Centre for Climate Futures
- Academic Lead, University of Leeds Climate Plan
Research interests
Piers is an atmospheric physicist known for his research on the causes of climate change and the climate response of the Earth system. His work is used to assess climate impacts and guide mitigation strategies. Current research interests are listed below.
Accurately predicting global temperature change: EU Horizon 2020 CONSTRAIN project, ZERO-IN report series.
Climate impacts of future aviation: EPSRC TOZCA project, NERC Jet Zero MAGICA project, Royal Society report on future aviation fuels, AEF webinar on non-CO2 impacts of hydrogen.
Indicators of Global Climate Change project: press release, full publication, dashboard, Carbon Brief article.
Research recognition awards include: Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award (2011); Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (2019); Natural and Environmental Research Council Research Impact Award (2023); Web of Science Clarivate Analytics highly cited researcher (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).
Other interests: Wild Ingleborough, Gair Wood; University of Leeds Climate Plan and review; Zero Carbon Harrogate.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>- Contrail Assessment of Future Aircraft and Propulsion Architectures
- MAGICA - Modelling Aviation Global climate Impacts from Contrails and Aerosols
Qualifications
- PhD Meteorology, University of Reading
- BSc Physics, Imperial College, London
Professional memberships
- Royal Meteorological Society (Fellow)
- American Meteorological Society
- American Geophysical Union (Fellow)
Student education
Piers leads the teaching on postgraduate courses related to climate change, he supervises both postgraduate and undergraduate research projects and contributes to undergraduate teaching related to climate change. He also teaches on various summer schools and short courses related to climate assessment, science and policy.
Research groups and institutes
- Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science