Our research
The University of Reading has one of the largest concentrations of researchers in weather and climate science in the World.
A key distinctive focus of our research is atmosphere and ocean dynamics, with expertise spanning fundamental processes across the globe that are important from timescales from hours to centuries.
We meet regularly in 20 research groups including Dynamical Processes, Tropical Meteorology, Mesoscale Dynamics and Climate & Ocean Dynamics. We carry out research into weather systems that dominate climate extremes and impacts, such as convective storms, cyclones and jet streams.
We examine the processes that control the evolution and predictability of weather, using observations from field experiments to inform the theoretical understanding that is used to improve numerical models used for both weather and climate prediction.
Alongside our core research we also tackle problems of concern to society. For instance, our expertise has recently grown in areas of environmental prediction, such as:
- hydrology and flooding
- urban meteorology
- energy meteorology
With the wider world increasingly waking up to the threats posed by climate change, our researchers are leading the way in tackling the key questions being raised.
We expect that researchers supported by this Japan Fellowship will have established research interests in atmospheric dynamics which may include weather systems and aspects of the evolution of the whole climate system including teleconnections between regions and interactions with ocean, cryosphere, land surface and hydrology.
UK-Japan Climate Collaboration (UJCC and recent initiatives)
There are many long-standing research relationships between the University of Reading and collaborators in Japan.
Ground-breaking research on global teleconnections over several decades, led to the award to the Japan Prize to Professor Sir Brian Hoskins and Professor Mike Wallace.
A flagship example of the University of Reading’s research relationship is the UK-Japan Climate Collaboration (UJCC) which ran 2004-2007.
Much of the UK high resolution global climate modelling programme traces its origins to that time and most recently has involved the DYAMOND initiative comparing simulations by “storm-resolving” (km grid-scale) global models.
A new km-scale protocol, complementary to HighResMIPv2, has been jointly developed, and aims to deliver one of the key datasets that we encourage the international community to analyse during the 2025 WCRP global hackathon, the “WCRP Hack-a-Palooza”.
Researchers in the water@Reading group have been collaborating with the Global Hydrodynamics Lab at The University of Tokyo, investigating how to integrate global river models into Earth System models for operational flood forecasting, working with the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts.
