Present Appointment:

Pier Luigi Vidale is a full Professor at the University of Reading and a Senior Scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS-Climate), leading and developing research on High-Resolution Global Climate Modelling and biosphere-atmosphere interactions. In October 2010 he was appointed as the first holder of the “Willis Chair of Climate System Science and Climate Hazards”, an endowed chair co-funded by Willis and NCAS, based at the Department of Meteorology. As part of such activity, he has launched the Weather and Climate Hazards Laboratory. In 2008 he was awarded a “Personal Chair” of Climate System Science at the Department of Meteorology.

Research and Academic Interests

He is an expert in weather and climate modelling, with special focus on landsurface-atmosphere interactions at the local to regional scale. His research has led to major progress in several areas, in particular: understanding the natureand causes of summer heat waves; understanding the feedbacks between atmosphere, vegetation (photosynthesis) and soil moisture; monitoring ofvegetation growth and its variability from space; modelling of extreme weather and climate events, as well as quantifying their impacts (Tropical Cyclones,floods, droughts, wind storms).