Research Overview

Oliver's interests are in atmospheric composition, chemistry and transport, and in understanding how natural and anthropogenic emissions of trace gases affect regional air quality and global climate.

Research

He has 30 years experience in developing and applying numerical models of atmospheric processes over a range of scales from urban to global, and has published more than 130 refereed journal papers. His recent research in atmospheric sciences has focussed on:

• Intercontinental transport of ozone and its precursors. This research informs air quality policy through the UN-ECE task force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (HTAP).
• Indirect climate impacts of short-lived gases such as NOx and CO through their influence over tropospheric chemistry. This has involved contributing to three IPCC climate assessment reports (2001, 2007, 2013). A new focus is on the atmospheric and climate impacts of hydrogen usage for the EU-funded HYDRA project.
• Regional and urban air quality in the UK and abroad, including contributions to the MAQS-Health and HEICCAM projects, and leading a chapter of a recent Royal Society report on air quality and climate change in the UK.
• Atmosphere-biosphere interactions and the role of atmospheric chemistry in the Earth System. Recent research focussed on the impacts of biofuel cultivation on human mortality and crop yields in Europe, and on ozone dry deposition processes under the NERC Atmospheric Chemistry in the Earth System (ACITES) network.
• Processes controlling surface ozone and air quality over East Asia. This builds on 10 years experience working in the US and Japan and includes ongoing collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing on air quality, contributions to the APHH-Beijing and APHH-Delhi programmes, and the COP-AQ project on Net Zero and Air Quality.
• Characterising and reducing uncertainty in atmospheric chemistry-transport models. This research has contributed to a number of recent international model intercomparison projects, including ACCENT, HTAP and CCMI.

Oliver is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, and was a member of council 2010-2013. He serves as a Core Panel Member of the NERC Peer Review College. He is a former editor of Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere, a journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan, and Atmospheric Science Letters, a journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

PhD Opportunities: He is happy to supervise PhD projects addressing atmospheric composition/chemistry, air quality or climate change related to any of the topics listed above.

Teaching

Oliver's teaching includes first and second year undergraduate courses on Atmosphere, Weather and Climate that provide a grounding in atmospheric science and meteorology for students on BSc and MSci degree schemes across the Lancaster Environment Centre. He contributes lectures on air quality and on the chemistry and transport of atmospheric pollutants to undergraduate and Masters courses. He also supervises undergraduate and masters dissertation topics focussing on atmospheric chemistry and transport, air quality and climate.

Roles

Oliver is Programme Director for Environmental Science and Earth and Environmental Science degree schemes. He was Associate Director for Research in LEC from 2017-2023, and was formerly undergraduate Admissions Tutor for Environmental Science degrees.