EGS Hans Oeschger Medallist 2002

Professor Phil Jones is at the moment one of the directors of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He was born in Surrey in 1952 and completed a B.A. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Lancaster in 1973 and an M.Sc. (1974) and Ph.D. (1977) at the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

In the late 1970s, Phil Jones first conceived the idea of developing a gridded database of surface temperatures. The global and hemispheric temperature series produced are one of the most widely cited pieces of data, not just in climatology but in many other fields. Over the next twenty years working with many collaborators in Norwich, Britain, Europe and elsewhere, he has extended and improved the analyses and in the last few years begun bringing relevant proxy climatic data together to attempt extensions back for the last thousand years.

Phil Jones has published over 100 papers in the scientific literature and been involved in many others in the fields of climatology, paleoclimatology and hydrology. He has been supported over the years by grants from the European Union and British Government sources, but the most consistent support has come from the US Department of Energy, whose support has been continuous since 1979.

Phil Jones has been active within the World Meteorological Organization, serving on committees that have continually strived to improve the free international exchange of climatic data.