The University of Reading's Department of Meteorology was founded in 1965. It is the only UK University which offers a full range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in meteorology. Details of undergraduate courses can be obtained by writing to the Department or referring to the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Prospectus.
The Department, which is led by Prof B.J.Hoskins FRS, has about 17 academic teaching staff, 50 research staff, 11 support staff, 50 research students, 20 MSc/Diploma students and about 60 undergraduate students. The Department is active in research in a diverse range of areas in meteorological science. In the latest external review of its research and teaching, the Department received the highest possible gradings. It has a wide range of facilities for both teaching and research purposes. These include atmospheric science laboratories and access to a large range of computers. The campus has a distributed workstation network and is linked to the national academic computer network JANET. The Department is one of the largest users of supercomputers in the UK universities. Our students use supercomputers, workstations and personal computers and associated scientific software. The laboratories include latest measurement technology for field meteorological observations.
The Department includes the Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology (not yet available), which is a collaborative centre involving the Department and the UK Meteorological Office, and the Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling (not yet available), largely funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. It has strong links with the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecast, which is also in Reading, and the UK Meteorological Office (including the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research) which is in Bracknell, about 15 km from the Department. The Meteorological Office use part of our MSc courses in the training of their Scientific Officers.
The Department is thus a very active environment for undergraduate and postgraduate study. Supervisors for higher degree research and lecturers in the taught courses are normally specialists in their field.
The Department offers undergraduate courses leading to a BSc in Meteorology, or as a combined subject, Mathematics and Meteorology, or Physics and Meteorology, and with the Department of Soil Science and the Postgraduate Research Institute in Sedimentology it offers a BSc in Environmental Science of the Earth and Atmosphere.
The department offers postgraduate courses leading to an MSc/Diploma in Weather, Climate and Modelling, or in Applied and Agricultural Meteorology. Scientific Officers from the UK. Meteorological Office also attend these courses. In addition, the department is also part of the new Masters in Research (MRes) which has an aim to provide a training in research methods in preperation for a research career. A summer course in Computers in Agricultural Climatology is held jointly with the Statistical Services Centre.
Research programmes leading to a PhD (minimum 3 years) and MPhil (minimum 2 years) are an extremely important part of the training and research in the department.
Postgraduate degrees (both MSc, MRes and PhD) are supported by studentships and fellowships from several agencies including the UK Research councils, the WMO, and the British Council.
In the latest government review of teaching in universities, the department was rated as excellent (the highest rating). This complements our research grade of 5 (the highest grade).
For a complete list of teaching staff, see here.
