Professor Martyn Chipperfield

Profile

Martyn is an atmospheric scientist within the School of Earth and Environment. He is also a member and former Director of the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (ICAS).

After obtaining his PhD at Cambridge, Martyn worked in the Space Science Department of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and then at the French Met Office in Toulouse. He returned to Cambridge in 1993 where he was a Research Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry. He moved to Leeds in January 2000.

His research group consists of 5 PhD students and 5 Post-Doctoral research fellows. Current research projects include:

• Modelling of tropospheric chemistry and aerosols (e.g. impact of chlorine/bromine/iodine).
• Studies of stratospheric chemistry and transport (e.g. ozone depletion and recovery and impact of solar variability).
• Interpreting and exploiting satellite observations in the stratosphere and troposphere.
• Data assimilation and inverse modelling to retrieve carbon fluxes.
• Modelling of air quality using regional models.
• The atmospheric impacts of rocket emissions and space industry.

Martyn is the creator and lead developer of the TOMCAT/SLIMCAT 3-D atmospheric model. He is a PI in the NERC National Centre for Earth Observation, and PI (or Co-I) on the current NERC projects LSO3, Polygram, InHALE, MeteorStrat and the ESA OREGANO and LOLLIPOP projects.

Martyn was the first Director of the Leeds-York NERC Doctoral Training Partnership (2013-2017). The DTP started in 2014 and recruits around 28 PhD students per year across 6 departments in the two universities.

I am currently on the Science Team for the ESA Explorer 11 candidate mission: The Changing-Atmosphere Infra-red Tomography Explorer (CAIRT). CAIRT would be the first limb-sounder with imaging Fourier-transform infrared technology in space. By observing simultaneously the atmosphere from the mid-troposphere to the lower thermosphere (about 5 to 115 km altitude), CAIRT will provide global observations of ozone, temperature, water vapour, as well as key halogen and nitrogen compounds.

Martyn has served on a number of national/international committees, especially related to ozone depletion, satellite missions and chemistry-climate modelling. He is currently on the Steering Committee for the 2026 WMO/UNEP Assessment for Stratospheric Ozone

Awards:

• Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award 2015
• Royal Society of Chemistry John Jeyes Award 2018
• Elected Fellow of American Geophysical Union 2020

Research interests

I have published over 380 peer-reviewed papers (h-index 69). A formatted list is available here.

I develop and use atmospheric models and observations to study:

• Stratospheric ozone layer depletion and recovery
• Chemistry-climate interactions
• Greenhouse gas emissions and budgets
• Air Quality and tropospheric compostion
• Upper atmosphere chemistry
• Numerical model development

See my research pages for more information

Group Alumni

See full list on my research group pages. The page provides links to PhD theses.

Primary investigator (PI)

• Development and application of Earth Observation to support reductions in methane emission from agriculture (EOforCH4)
• National Centre for Atmospheric Science
• National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO)
• Sources and Impacts of Short-Lived Anthropogenic Chlorine (SISLAC)

Co-investigator (Co-I)

• FlyZero - Climate impact of emissions from aircrafts using alternative fuel and energy systems
• The Global Methane Budget

Qualifications

• PhD, Atmospheric Science, University of Cambridge
• BA, Natural Sciences (1st class honours), University of Cambridge

Professional memberships

• Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC, CChem)
• Royal Meteorological Society (FRMetS)
• American Geophysical Union (Fellow)
• American Meteorological Society

Student education

Martyn teaches in the areas of environmental science, atmospheric chemistry and satellite earth observation.

He is module leader for:

• SOEE2481 Atmospheric Pollution from Local to Global Scales
• SOEE3190 Earth Observation from Space

and also teaches on the modules:

• SOEE1281 Atmosphere
• SOEE1444 Fieldwork and Tutorials 1
• SOEE2701 Fieldwork and Tutorials 2
• SOEE3431 Atmospheric Pollution: Causes, Impact and Regulation

Before coming to Leeds Martyn taught physical chemistry at the University of Cambridge and in an additional part-time role for the Open University.

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science
• Atmospheric Chemistry and Aerosols

Current postgraduate researchers

• Yuwen Li