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Professor Piers Forster CBE

Professor Piers Forster CBE

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, appointed as its Interim Chair for 2023-2025, and appointed for a second term in 2025. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2026 for services to tackling climate change.

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: web page, full publication, 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); The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) Climate Science and Climate Science Communications Award (2025); Web of Science Clarivate Analytics highly cited researcher (2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024,2025).

Other interests: Wild Ingleborough, Gair Wood; University of Leeds Climate Plan and review; Zero Carbon Harrogate.

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Some research projects I'm currently working on, or have worked 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>

Qualifications

  • PhD Meteorology, University of Reading
  • BSc Physics, Imperial College, London

Professional memberships

  • Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
  • American Geophysical Union (Fellow)
  • Royal Meteorological Society (Fellow)
  • American Meteorological Society

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
<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>