Hannah Cloke

Prof Dr Hannah L. Cloke OBE is a physical geographer, natural hazards researcher and hydrologist specialising in earth system modelling, flood forecasting, catchment hydrology and applications of Numerical Weather Predictions. She leads a wide programme of research on the theoretical and practical development of early warning systems for natural hazards, particularly for floods, droughts, heatwaves and disaster risk management.

Hannah works closely with partners including the Environment Agency, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the UK Met Office, the Red Cross Climate Centre & other hydrometeorological services and humanitarian actors. Prof Cloke is a member of is a member of HEPEX and has worked as research partner for the EU's Copernicus Emergency Management Service for Floods since 2003. Hannah advises government, forecasting authorities and humanitarian agencies on national and international flooding incidents and forecasting science and provides expert commentary in the media.

Hannah is an elected fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society. She won the NERC Early Career Impact Award in 2015, was awarded the 2018 Plinius Medal of the European Geosciences Union and the 2019 British Hydrological Society's President's Prize. Hannah was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to flood forecasting and the development of hazard early warning systems.

Hannah obtained a BSc (1999) and PhD (2003) in Geography from the University of Bristol, UK. She then worked at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy on the European Flood Alert System and then from 2004 lectured at in the Department of Geography at King's College London, UK. In 2012 she moved to the University of Reading; to a joint post between the Department of Geography and Environmental Science and the Department of Meteorology.