physics

Joanna Haigh

Joanna Haigh is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Joanna Haigh rather than just read about it. In short: Joanna Dorothy Haigh (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment.

Key takeaways

Joanna Haigh belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Joanna Haigh to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Joanna Haigh from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Joanna Dorothy Haigh (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She served as head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), and served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Early life and education Haigh was born in 1954. She was educated at Hitchin Girls' School, then an all-girls grammar school in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She showed an early interest in the weather, building her own weather station in her back garden as a teenager. She studied physics at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; as per tradition, this was later promoted to a Master of Arts (Oxon) degree. This was followed by a Master of Science (MSc) degree in meteorology at Imperial College London. She returned to Oxford to complete a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in atmospheric physics under the supervision of C.D. Walshaw. This was awarded in 1980 for her doctoral thesis on Experiments with a two-dimensional model of the general circulation.

Career and research Haigh is Emeritus Professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London. She joined Imperial College London as a lecturer in 1984. Since 2014, she has served as co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She has served as head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College from 2009 to 2014. Haigh is known for her work on solar variability, and also works on radiative transfer, stratosphere-troposphere coupling and climate modelling. She has served as editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences and a lead author on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Views on climate change Haigh conforms to the mainstream scientific view, that anthropogenic carbon emissions lead to increased greenhouse warming. She stated in June 2016 that if current levels of carbon dioxide emissions continued unabated, they would lead to a 5 °C increase over pre-industrial climate by the end of the next century, and that achieving a zero temperature rise would require a complete cessation of carbon emissions. She also stated that she was optimistic about the future, following the COP21 conference, but later, when Donald Trump became president of the United States, she said: "If Trump does what he said he'd do, and others follow suit, my gut feeling is that I'm scared. Very scared."

Awards and honours In the 2013 New Year Honours, Haigh was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to physics". Haigh served as president of the Royal Meteorological Society from 2012 to 2014; she is now a vice-president. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Her nomination read:

Distinguished for her scientific leadership in the area of solar influences on the middle atmosphere and for her modelling of how these effects can modulate tropospheric circulations and so propagate to Earth's surface. Her expertise in modelling atmospheric radiative transfer allowed the development of computationally fast but accurate radiative transfer schemes some of which are now in use by climate modelling groups across the world. By proposing and demonstrating an entirely novel mechanism for solar influence on climate she has allowed proper allowance to be made for the small and subtle, yet revealing effects. In 2004 she received the Charles Chree Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics and in 2010 the Royal Meteorological Society Adrian Gill prize for her work on solar variability and its effects on climate. In November 2020 she was included in the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power list 2020. She was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili for The Life Scientific in 2013. Haigh is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP).

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Joanna Haigh

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Joanna Haigh claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Joanna Haigh before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Joanna Haigh ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Joanna Haigh

In research: Joanna Haigh appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Joanna Haigh in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Joanna Haigh is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1954 births, Academics of Imperial College London, Academics of the University of Oxford, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Joanna Haigh outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Joanna Haigh in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Joanna Haigh means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Joanna Haigh out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Joanna Haigh in simple terms?

Why does Joanna Haigh matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Joanna Haigh?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Joanna Haigh.