Chris Kilsby

Chris Kilsby is Professor of Hydrology and Climate Change, head of the Water Resources Engineering group and Director Of Research for the School. Chris joined the School in 1991 from the UK Met Office and has since carried out research and teaching on many aspects of engineering in the water sector ranging including hydrological risk (drought and flood risk) as well as national infrastructure. His work is now predominantly in the context of climate change impacts, sustainability and adaptation responses for the future.

He is head of the Water Resources Engineering group, Director of Research and a mamber of School Executive Committee. He co-ordinated the REF submission for UoA14 in 2014. He is Senior Academic for Newcastle's membership of the Willis Research Network.

Chris began his research career at the Met Research Flight of the UK Met Office carrying out research into radiation transfer in the atmosphere for use in climate change modelling. He moved to Newcastle University where he started work as a Research Associate on Mediterranean climate change and hydrology and large scale hydrological modelling. Since then he has researched many aspects of the water sector, particularly focussed on extremes and climate change impacts and adaptation, ranging from drought to flood risk.

The scope of the work has been from small catchments up to continental scale and has covered many parts of the world. An increasing emphasis in recent years has been on the hydrology and drainage of cities, increasingly in the context of climate change impacts and adaptation responses.

A major theme has been the use of simulation models for both generating rainfall sceanrios as well as simulating hydrologic and hydraulic responses of natural and man-made infrastructure systems. Much of this work has used stochastic approaches for rainfall and climate scenario modelling. His recent work includes leading the Weather Generator component of the UKCP09 national climate scenarios. He is Senior Academic for Newcastle's involvement with the Willis Research Network : Willis are a leading international insurance broker and the research is directed at improving understanding and simulation of flood risk worldwide.