Climate physicist and expert on thunderstorm electrification who was also a published poet
How thunderstorms are generated in clouds is still not fully understood. But John Latham, who has died aged 83, did much to explain the physical processes of cloud electrification, cloud lightning and precipitation – how water falls from clouds in various forms. Later he proposed a way in which clouds could provide a crucial if temporary role in reducing the impact of global warming.
The research he began under John (BJ) Mason in 1958 at what is now Imperial College London focused on the role of ice crystals in cloud electrification. His laboratory studies of thunderstorms involved the concept of a temperature difference between graupel – soft hail – and ice crystal surfaces. He and Mason developed the Temperature Gradient Theory and provided numerical predictions of the mechanism. Like all theories of thunderstorm electrification, it proved controversial.
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