Profile

Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University's Department of Physics. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and risks of extreme weather and in quantifying their implications for long-range climate forecasts.

Myles has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as Lead Author on Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes for the 3rd Assessment in 2001 and as Review Editor on Global Climate Projections for the 4th Assessment in 2007.

He proposed the use of Probabilistic Event Attribution to quantify the contribution of human and other external influences on climate to specific individual weather events and leads the www.climateprediction.net project, using distributed computing to run the world’s largest ensemble climate modelling experiments.

Current/recent responsibilities

• Research Cluster coordinator: Climate, School of Geography and the Environment.
• Group Leader, Climate Dynamics Group, Department of Physics, University of Oxford. Responsible for climate modelling and attribution, comprising on average 4 post-docs and 5 doctoral students over the past three years.
• Principal Investigator, "www.climateprediction.net - distributed computing for global climate research", collaborative project (2000 present, overall budget c. £4m), performing large-scale Monte Carlo simulation of climate change 1900 - 2100 using idle CPU on personal computers volunteered by the general public.
• Lead Author, "Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes", Chapter 12 of the IPCC WG1 Third Assessment. Review Editor, "Global Climate Projections" Chapter 10 of the IPCC WG1 Fourth Assessment. Lead author, "Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional", Chapter 10 of the IPCC WG1 Fifth Assessment.
• Member of the US NOAA/Dept of Energy International Advisory Group on the Detection and Attribution of Anthropogenic Climate Change.

Selected publications

2013

• Allen, M.R., Mitchell, J.F.B. and Stott, P.A. (2013) Test of a decadal climate forecast. Nature Geoscience, 6: 243-244.
• Kunreuther, H., Heal, G., Allen, M., Edenhofer, O., Field, C.B. and Yohe, G. (2013) Risk management and climate change. Nature Climate Change, 3: 447-450.
• Levy, A.A., Ingram, W., Jenkinson, M., Huntingford, C., Hugo Lambert, F., Allen, M. (2013) Can correcting feature location in simulated mean climate improve agreement on projected changes? Geophysical Research Letters, 40(2): 354-358.
• Otto, A., Otto, F.E.L., Boucher, O., Church, J., Hegerl, G., Forster, P.M., Gillett, N.P., Gregory, J., Johnson, G.C., Knutti, R., Lewis, N., Lohmann, U., Marotzke, J., Myhre, G., Shindell, D., Stevens, B. and Allen, M.R. (2013) Energy budget constraints on climate response. Nature Geoscience, 6: 415-416.
• Otto, A., Todd, B.J., Bowerman, N., Frame, D.J. and Allen, M.R. (2013) Climate system properties determining the social cost of carbon. Environmental Research Letters, 8(2).
• Yamazaki, K., Rowlands, D.J., Aina, T., Blaker, A.T., Bowery, A., Massey, N., Miller, J., Rye, C., Tett, S.F.B., Williamson, D., Yamazaki, Y.H. and Allen, M.R. (2013) Obtaining diverse behaviors in a climate model without the use of flux adjustments. Journal of Geophysical Research Atmosphere, 118(7): 2781-2793.

2012

• Huntingford, C., Lowe, J.A., Gohar, L.K., Bowerman, N.H.A., Allen, M.R., Raper, S.C.B. and Smith, S.M. (2012) The link between a global 2 °C warming threshold and emissions in years 2020, 2050 and beyond. Environmental Research Letters, 7(1).
• Otto, F.E.L., Massey, N., van Oldenborgh, G.J., Jones, R.G. and Allen, M.R. (2012) Reconciling two approaches to attribution of the 2010 Russian heat wave. Geophysical Research Letters, 39(L04702).
• Smith, S.M., Lowe, J.A., Bowerman, N.H.A., Gohar, L.K., Huntingford, C. and Allen, M.R. (2012) Equivalence of greenhouse-gas emissions for peak temperature limits. Nature Climate Change, 2: 535-538.
• Watson, P.A.G., Karoly, D.J., Allen, M.R., Faull, N., Lee, D.S. (2012) Quantifying uncertainty in future Southern Hemisphere circulation trends. Geophysical Research Letters, 39(23).

2011

• Allen, M.R. (2011) The scientific basis for climate change liability. In, Lord, R., Goldberg, S., Rajamani, L. and Brunnée, J. (eds.) Climate Change Liability: Transnational law and practice. Cambridge University Press. 690 pp. ISBN: 9781107017603.
• Pall, P., Aina, T., Stone, D.A., Stott, P.A., Nozawa, T., Hilberts, A.G.J., Lohmann, D. and Allen, M.R. (2011) Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Nature, 470: 382-385.

2010

• Bowerman, N.H.A., Frame, D.J., Huntingford, C., Lowe, J.A. and Allen, M.R. (2010) Cumulative carbon emissions, emissions floors and short-term rates of warming: implications for policy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 369(1934): 45-66.
• Ricke, K.L., Morgan, M.G. and Allen, M.R. (2010) Regional climate response to solar-radiation management. Nature Geoscience, 3(8): 537-541.

2009

• Allen, M., Frame, D., Frieler, K., Hare, W., Huntingford, C., Jones, C., Knutti, R., Lowe, J., Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N. and Raper, S. (2009) The exit strategy. Nature Reports Climate Change.
• Allen, M.R., Frame, D.J. and Mason, C.F. (2009) The case for mandatory sequestration. Nature Geoscience, 2(12): 813-814.
• Allen, M.R., Frame, D.J., Huntingford, C., Jones, C.D., Lowe, J.A., Meinshausen, M. and Meinshausen, N. (2009) Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature, 458: 1163-1166.
• Lambert, F.H. and Allen, M.R. (2009) Are changes in global precipitation constrained by the tropospheric energy budget? Journal of Climate, 22(3): 499-517.
• Meinshausen, M., Meinshausen, N., Hare, W., Raper, S.C.B., Frieler, K., Knutti, R., Frame, D.J. and Allen, M.R. (2009) Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 degrees C. Nature, 458: 1158-1162.
• Stone, D.A., Allen, M.R., Stott, P.A., Pall, P., Min, S.K., Nozawa, T. and Yukimoto, S. (2009) The Detection and Attribution of Human Influence on Climate*. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 34: 1-16.

2008

• Frame, D. and Allen, M.R. (2008) Climate change and global risk. Chapter 13 in, Bostrom, N. and Milan, M. (eds.) Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford University Press, Oxford. pp. 265-285. ISBN: 978-0-19-857050-9.
• Sanderson, B.M., Piani, C., Ingram, W.J., Stone, D.A. and Allen, M.R. (2008) Towards constraining climate sensitivity by linear analysis of feedback patterns in thousands of perturbed-physics GCM simulations. Climate Dynamics, 30(2-3): 175-190.

2007

• Allen, M.R. and Frame, D.J. (2007) Call off the quest. Science, 318(5850): 582-583.
• Frame, D.J., Faull, N.E., Joshi, M.M. and Allen, M.R. (2007) Probabilistic climate forecasts and inductive problems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 365(1857): 1971-1992.
• Pall, P., Allen, M.R. and Stone, D.A. (2007) Testing the Clausius--Clapeyron constraint on changes in extreme precipitation under CO 2 warming. Climate Dynamics, 28(4): 351-363.
• Piani, C., Sanderson, B., Giorgi, F., Frame, D.J., Christensen, C. and Allen, M.R. (2007) Regional probabilistic climate forecasts from a multithousand, multimodel ensemble of simulations. Journal of Geophysical Research, 112(D2408).

2006

• Allen, M., Andronova, N., Booth, B., Dessai, S., Frame, D., Forest, C., Gregory, J., Hegerl, G., Knutti, R. and Piani, C. (2006) Observational constraints on climate sensitivity. Avoiding dangerous climate change. Cambridge University Press. pp. 281-290(10).
• Allen, M., Pall, P., Stone, D. and Stott, P. (2006) Scientific challenges in the attribution of harm to human influence on climate. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 155.
• Knutti, R., Meehl, G.A., Allen, M.R. and Stainforth, D.A. (2006) Constraining climate sensitivity from the seasonal cycle in surface temperature. Journal of Climate, 19(17): 4224-4233.
• Lopez, A., Tebaldi, C., New, M., Stainforth, D., Allen, M. and Kettleborough, J. (2006) Two approaches to quantifying uncertainty in global temperature changes. Journal of climate, 19(19): 4785-4796.
• Massey, N., Aina, T., Allen, M., Christensen, C., Frame, D., Goodman, D., Kettleborough, J., Martin, A., Pascoe, S. and Stainforth, D. (2006) Data access and analysis with distributed federated data servers in climateprediction.net. Advances in Geosciences, 8: 49-56.
• Stainforth, D.A., Allen, M.R., Frame, D.J. and Piani, C. (2006) Risks associated with stabilisation scenarios and uncertainty in regional and global climate change impacts. Avoiding dangerous climate change Schellnhuber H.-J, Cramer W, Nakiccnovic N, Wigley T, Yohe G.W: 315-320.

2005

• Piani, C., Frame, D.J., Stainforth, D.A. and Allen, M.R. (2005) Constraints on climate change from a multi-thousand member ensemble of simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 32(23).

2004

• Lambert, F.H., Stott, P.A., Allen, M.R. and Palmer, M.A. (2004) Detection and attribution of changes in 20th century land precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters, 31(10).
• Stott, P.A., Stone, D.A. and Allen, M.R. (2004) Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003. Nature, 432(7017): 610-614.

2003

• Allen, M. (2003) Liability for climate change. Nature, 421(6926): 891-892.

2002

• Allen, M.R. and Ingram, W.J. (2002) Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrologic cycle. Nature, 419(6903): 224-232.
• Allen, M.R., Kettleborough, J.A. and Stainforth, D.A. (2002) Model error in weather and climate forecasting.. ECMWF Predictability of Weather and Climate Seminar.
• Forest, C.E., Stone, P.H., Sokolov, A.P., Allen, M.R. and Webster, M.D. (2002) Quantifying uncertainties in climate system properties with the use of recent climate observations. Science, 295(5552): 113-117.

1999

• Allen, M.R. and Tett, S.F.B. (1999) Checking for model consistency in optimal fingerprinting. Climate Dynamics, 15(6): 419-434.
• Tett, S.F.B., Stott, P.A., Allen, M.R., Ingram, W.J. and Mitchell, J.F.B. (1999) Causes of twentieth-century temperature change near the Earth's surface. Nature, 399(6736): 569-572.