Dr. Charles Williams
Senior Research Fellow (NCAS Climate)
Responsibilities:
Climate Scientist (Research Staff).
Research Interests:
- African climate variability and change, and climate extremes
- Indian monsoon variability and change
- Land-atmosphere interactions, and associated impacts on climate
- Impacts of regional climate variability and change on society, and adaptation/resilience building to climate shocks
Research Projects:
- Hydrometeorological feedbacks and changes in water storage and fluxes in Northern India (Hydroflux-India)
- Comparing Atmosphere-Land surface feedbacks from Models within the tropics (CALM)
- Understanding rainfall variability and extreme events over southern Africa (Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship)
- Tropical Applications of Meteorology using Satellite data (TAMSAT)
Postdoctoral & graduate student supervision
- Alexander Farnsworth is a PhD student co-supervised by Dr Emily Black, who has recently submitted his thesis on land-atmosphere interactions in central Africa (RETF studentship)
- Edmund Har is a final year PhD student co-supervised by Dr Emily Black, working on rainfall variability and the influence of the Turkana jet over eastern Africa
- Matthew Young is a 3rd year PhD student co-supervised by Dr Christine Chiu, working on improving satellite-derived rainfall estimates over Africa
Other interests
- Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS)
- Chair of the Climate Change Research Group (CCRG), one of the research groups of the RGS
- Science communication and the use of social media
Centaur Publications
2021
Ayesiga, G., Holloway, C. E. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9903-8989, Williams, C. J. R., Yang, G.-Y. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7450-3477, Stratton, R. and Roberts, M.
(2021)
Linking Equatorial African precipitation to Kelvin wave processes in the CP4-Africa convection-permitting regional climate simulation.
Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
ISSN 1520-0469
doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-21-0039.1
Ayesiga, G., Holloway, C. E., Williams, C. J., Yang, G.-Y. and Ferrett, S. (2021) The observed synoptic scale precipitation relationship between Western Equatorial Africa and Eastern Equatorial Africa. International Journal of Climatology, 41 (S1). pp. 582-601. ISSN 0899-8418 doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6711
2018
Young, M. P., Chiu, J. C., Williams, C. J. R., Stein, T. H. M., Stengel, M., Fielding, M. D. and Black, E. (2018) Spatio-temporal variability of warm rain events over southern West Africa from geostationary satellite observations for climate monitoring and model evaluation. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 144 (716). pp. 2311-2330. ISSN 1477-870X doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3372
2014
Young, M. P., Williams, C. J. R., Chiu, J. C., Maidment, R. and Chen, S.-H. (2014) Investigation of discrepancies in satellite rainfall estimates over Ethiopia. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 15. pp. 2347-2369. ISSN 1525-7541 doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0111.1
2012
Williams, C.J.R., Allan, R.P. and Kniveton, D.R. (2012) Diagnosing atmosphere–land feedbacks in CMIP5 climate models. Environmental Research Letters, 7 (4). 044003. ISSN 1748-9326 doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044003
Williams, C. J. R. and Kniveton, D. R. (2012) Atmosphere-land surface interactions and their influence on extreme rainfall and potential abrupt climate change over southern Africa. Climatic Change, 112 (3-4). pp. 981-996. ISSN 0165-0009 doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0266-7
2010
Williams, C. J. R., Kniveton, D. R. and Layberry, R. (2010) Assessment of a climate model to reproduce rainfall variability and extremes over Southern Africa. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 99 (1-2). pp. 9-27. ISSN 1434-4483 doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-009-0124-y
Williams, C., Kniveton, D. and Layberry, R. (2010) Idealized SST anomaly regional climate model experiments: a note of caution. Progress in Physical Geography, 34 (1). pp. 59-74. ISSN 1477-0296 doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0309133309356738
2009
Kniveton, D. R., Layberry, R., Williams, C. J. R. and Peck, M. (2009) Trends in the start of the wet season over Africa. International Journal of Climatology, 29 (9). pp. 1216-1225. ISSN 0899-8418 doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1792
2008
Williams, C. J. R., Kniveton, D.R. and Layberry, R. (2008) Influence of south Atlantic sea surface temperatures on rainfall variability and extremes over southern Africa. Journal of Climate, 21 (24). pp. 6498-6520. ISSN 1520-0442 doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/2008JCLI2234.1
2007
Williams, C. J. R., Kniveton, D. and Layberry, R. (2007) Climatic and oceanic associations with daily rainfall extremes over southern Africa. International Journal of Climatology, 27 (1). pp. 93-108. ISSN 0899-8418 doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1376
Last update: 30th January 2019
