Peter Read
I am a Professor in the Department of Physics, and Fellow and Tutor in Physics
at Trinity College, University of Oxford, UK. In the Department I am currently Head of Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics, which is one of the six sub-Departments within Oxford Physics. I lecture on Physics of Fluid Flow to third year Physics students and on geophysical and planetary fluid dynamics in the final year Physics of Atmospheres and Oceans course. At Trinity College I am senior subject tutor, and teach roughly half the first and second year undergraduate courses in mainstream physics and mathematics, and on third year climate physics and fluid flow, to Trinity students.
Research Interests
I have worked in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics sub-Department at Oxford since 1991, where I head the Geophysical and Planetary Fluid Dynamics research group.
Current research activities include a strong element of fundamental hydrodynamics with applications to planetary atmospheres and oceans, particularly with regard
to dynamical and transport processes in rotating fluids, and the development of chaotic
flow through the nonlinear interactions of baroclinic and barotropic waves (highly
relevant to the atmosphere of Mars) and other processes (e.g. inertia-gravity waves, geostrophic turbulence etc.).
I am also closely involved in a number of specifically planetary projects, including
the development of simplified and comprehensive General Circulation Models (GCMs)
of the atmospheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, Venus etc. and the application of advanced meteorological data
assimilation methods (as used in operational weather forecasting) to the analysis
of spacecraft observations of planetary atmospheres.
Planetary Missions
I was a Co-investigator on the PMIRR (Pressure Modulator Infrared Radiometer) team
for NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter mission (launched in December 1998 and lost in September 1999!), with responsibility
for producing global analyses of atmospheric structure and meteorology from the PMIRR and radio science observations via data assimilation. I am also a Co-investigator
on the CIRS (Composite Infrared Spectrometer) team for the NASA/ESA Cassini orbiter
mission (launched in October 1997), and am involved in studies of dynamical processes in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. I am also a Co-investigator on the Mars Climate Sounder instrument team on the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission (launched in 2005), responsible for studies of the atmospheric circulation and meteorology of Mars.
I am a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS), the Royal Astronomical Society
(RAS) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU, formerly EGS). Between 1996 and 2000 I was Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics in EGS, and have been associate editor of the journals Physics and Chemistry of the
Earth and Surveys in Geophysics. I was also Associate Editor and later Co-Editor of the Quarterly Journal of the RMS from 2000 to 2008.
Contact Details
Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics
Clarendon Laboratory
University of Oxford
Parks Road
Oxford, OX1 3PU
UK
phone: +44 1865 272082
email:
Maintained by Peter Read
(
)
|
