Joanna Haigh

Haigh conforms to the mainstream scientific view, that anthropogenic carbon emissions lead to increased greenhouse warming. She stated in June 2016 that if current levels of carbon dioxide emissions continued unabated, they would lead to a 5 °C increase over pre-industrial climate by the end of the next century, and that achieving a zero temperature rise would require a complete cessation of carbon emissions. She also stated that she was optimistic about the future, following the COP21 conference, but later, when Donald Trump became president of the United States, she said: "If Trump does what he said he'd do, and others follow suit, my gut feeling is that I'm scared. Very scared."

She is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London. Since 2014, she has been co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She was previously head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College, serving between 2009 and 2014.

In the 2013 New Year Honours, Haigh was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for services to physics".

Haigh is a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society; she is now a vice-president. In 2013, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). Her nomination read:

Haigh is known for her work on solar variability, and also works on radiative transfer, stratosphere-troposphere coupling and climate modelling. She has been Editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences and a Lead Author on the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. In 2004 she received the Institute of Physics' Charles Chree Medal and Prize and in 2010 the Royal Meteorological Society Adrian Gill prize for her work on solar variability and its effects on climate.

Joanna Dorothy Haigh, CBE, FRS, FRMetS (born 7 May 1954) is a British physicist and academic. Before her retirement in 2019 she was Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and Environment. She is a former head of the Department of Physics at Imperial College London. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Haigh was born on 7 May 1954. She was educated at Hitchin Girls' School, then an all-girls grammar school in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She showed an early interest in the weather, building her own weather station in her back garden as a teenager. She studied physics at the Somerville College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree; as per tradition, this was later promoted to a Master of Arts (MA (Oxon)) degree. This was followed by a Master of Science (MSc) degree in meteorology at Imperial College London. She returned to Oxford to complete a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in atmospheric physics under the supervision of C.D. Walshaw. This was awarded in 1980 and her doctoral thesis was titled "Experiments with a two-dimensional model of the general circulation".