Philip R.A. Brown

Phil leads the Met Office collaboration with European partners in airborne research through the EUFAR international association.

Areas of expertise

  • Cloud microphysical and dynamical measurements;

  • Cloud-scale modelling;

  • Airborne field campaigns.

Publications by Phil

email: [email protected]

Current activities

Phil is Chair of the Executive Board of EUFAR, an international association that links a number of European member organisations with interests in airborne research. This association was formed as a result of several years of collaboration funded by the EC to develop the closer integration of airborne research infrastructures and activities across Europe. EUFAR continues to work towards broadening access to research aircraft and instrumentation and closer collaboration between the airborne science programs of its members.

Career background

Phil's personal research interests were in the development of measurement techniques for both individual cloud and precipitation particles and also bulk cloud properties such as liquid or ice water content. He was also involved in the development of the wind and turbulence measurement system on the FAAM aircraft including its capability to operate in supercooled clouds with the presence of airframe icing.

He joined the Met Office in 1978 and has worked with airborne research observations throughout his career. At the Meteorological Research Flight (MRF), Farnborough, he studied mountain lee waves over the UK. He then joined the Cloud Physics research branch at Bracknell studying secondary ice nucleation in convective clouds around the UK and continuing the development of a holographic cloud particle imager.

In 1992, Phil joined the Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology at Reading University, helping to develop the Met Office Large Eddy Model to study convective clouds and precipitation processes. Working with the Radar Meteorology group, he contributed to the observational validation of cloud simulations and on early assessments of the capability of spaceborne cloud radar. He contributed to cloud-scale modelling case studies as part of the EUCREM model-intercomparison project and the GCSS Working Group on cirrus clouds (now a part of GASS).

In 2000, Phil became manager of the Cloud Physics Group which became part of Observation Based Research following relocation of the Met Office to Exeter in 2003.

Phil has been involved with a number of international field measurement campaigns, initially with the Met Office's C-130 aircraft and subsequently the FAAM aircraft. These include ICE (1989), EUCREX (1993), RICO (2005) , VOCALS-REx (2008), COPE (2013) and ICE-D (2015).

External recognition

Phil is a member of the Science, Engineering and Sustainability Advisory Committee (SESAC) of Prospect, the trade union that represents staff in the Met Office.

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