John Philip Burrows (born 16 August 1954) is professor of the Physics of the Ocean and Atmosphere and Director of the Institutes of Environmental Physics and Remote Sensing at the University of Bremen. He is also a Fellow of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), part of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Education

Burrows was educated at West Park Grammar School in

St Helens, Merseyside St Helens () is a town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 102,629. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, which had a population of 176,843 at the United Kingdom Census 2001, 2001 Census. St Helens i ...

. He went on to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences in 1975 followed by a PhD in 1978 for research investigating free radical reactions by laser

magnetic resonance Magnetic resonance is a process by which a physical excitation (resonance) is set up via magnetism. This process was used to develop magnetic resonance imaging and Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy technology. It is also being used to ...

supervised by Brian Arthur Thrush.

Career

Following his PhD, Burrows was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1979 to 1982 he worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in

Harwell Harwell may refer to: People * Harwell (surname) * Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903–1990), American architect Places * Harwell, Nottinghamshire, England, a hamlet *Harwell, Oxfordshire, England, a village **RAF Harwell, a World War II RAF airfield, ...

followed by ten years at the

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Otto Hahn Institute; german: Max Planck Institut für Chemie - Otto Hahn Institut) is a non-university research institute under the auspices of the Max Planck Society (German: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft) in Ma ...

in Mainz. He was appointed a Professor at the University of Bremen in 1992 where he has worked since.

Research

Burrows' research has contributed to our scientific understanding of air pollution, the

ozone layer The ozone layer or ozone shield is a region of Earth's stratosphere that absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. It contains a high concentration of ozone (O3) in relation to other parts of the atmosphere, although still small in rela ...

, the upper atmosphere, biogeochemistry and climate change. He and his co-workers have studied the kinetics and

spectroscopy Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wa ...

of key atmospheric free radicals and gases, developed innovative '' in situ'' trace atmospheric measurement techniques, and pioneered the passive remote sensing of atmospheric constituents and surface parameters. Working closely with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, he initiated and led scientifically the SCIAMACHY project, which resulted in the satellite based measurements of the instruments Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on ESA ERS-2 (1995-2011), SCIAMACHY on ESA

Envisat Envisat ("Environmental Satellite") is a large inactive Earth-observing satellite which is still in orbit and now considered space debris. Operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), it was the world's largest civilian Earth observation satell ...

(2002 -2012), GOME-2 on EUMETSAT Metop Series (2006-2022), and the concepts GeoSCIA/GeoTROPE, now developed as European Union Copernicus Programme Sentinel 4, and CarbonSat/CarbonSat Constellation.

Awards and honours

Burrows is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and member of IAA. His research accolades include being awarded the following: the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) William Nordberg Medal in 2006, the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2008, the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy & Radiative Transfer (JQSRT) Milestone Paper Award in 2010, Haagen-Smit Prize 2012, EGU Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal 2013, IUGG Silver Medal IUGG 2015, and the Alfred Wegener Medal EGU 2016. Burrows was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burrows, John Philip Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academic staff of the University of Bremen British geophysicists 1954 births