He is Professor of Climate Science at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford,[1] as well as being the Director of the Radcliffe Meteorological Station, which has the longest single-site weather records in the United Kingdom.
[1] He also served as a representative for the World Climate Research Program to the International Council for Science in southern Africa, and as a member of multiple external steering committees including the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, The Scientific Steering Group of CLIVAR (World Climate Research Programme), The Met Office Climate Science Research Partnership, African Earth System Science (AFRICANNESS) and the Stockholm Environment Institute.
A key feature of his research has entailed field observation programmes in Africa which have aimed at improving weather forecast and climate models.
He was Principal Investigator of the NERC funded consortium grant Fennec programme which focused on the central Sahara (Algeria, Mali and Mauritania).
The Fennec programme included 200 hours of flying time in the UK’s Bae-146 research aircraft and ground observations on the Mali-Algerian border at Bordj Badji Mokhtar from flux tower, Lidar, sodar and radiosondes.
He continued field observations at Etosha and the dry river valleys in Namibia as part of the NERC funded CLARIFY campaign[6] which also featured the operation of the Bae-146 research aircraft in the subtropical South Atlantic Ocean.
In 2018, Washington secured NERC funding for a new Lidar system which was set up in Yaounde, Cameroon in collaboration with Wilfried Pokam.