Professor Myles Allen

Professor Myles Allen appointed CBE

Climate physics
Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics

Professor Myles Allen, FInstP, Professor of Geosystem Science in the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment and Department of Physics, a Fellow of Linacre College, and Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative, has been appointed CBE for services to climate change attribution, prediction and net zero.

He is a long-standing contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, most recently as a Coordinating Lead Author of the 2018 Special Report on 1.5°C, and initiated the climateprediction.net and weatherathome projects, using computing resources donated by the public to quantify uncertainty in climate predictions and the links between climate change and extreme weather.

‘All climate research is a team endeavour, and this is particularly true of the net zero journey,' comments Professor Allen. 'The need for net zero carbon dioxide emissions to halt global warming was a scientific curiosity only a decade ago: now 90% of the world economy is pledged to achieve it within the next few decades.

‘I am honoured to have played my part, along with so many brilliant collaborators and students both here in Oxford and around the world. I am especially pleased to be recognised, coincidentally, in the same year as my wife, Professor Irene Tracey, and to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped us keep two academic careers going: family, colleagues and, most of all, Irene herself and our three children. I am also particularly grateful for the support of the Department of Physics, then led by Roger Davies, helping me keep my career going while giving me a year out when our youngest arrived – as it happens, around the time we did the net zero work.’