Geoff Wadge obituary

My friend and former colleague Geoff Wadge, who has died aged 76, was a pioneer of the use of remote sensing to monitor and study active volcanoes.

In particular he became renowned for applying radar to detect ground movements before an eruption begins. Radar can see topography through clouds and can detect surface changes caused by underground movements of magma that sometimes indicate an impending explosion, thereby reducing the need for visits by scientists to dangerous areas close to a volcano.

Geoff was born in Burnley, Lancashire, to John Wadge and his wife, Doris (nee Owen), who ran a corner shop together. Educated at Burnley grammar school and motivated by teenage interests in pot-holing and the outdoors, he embarked on a geology degree at Imperial College London in 1968, followed by a PhD there, for which he studied Mount Etna in Sicily.

His first job, in 1975, was as a lecturer in the geology department at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. After four years there he moved to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, to research Caribbean tectonics and to begin his work on using remote sensing to monitor active volcanoes.

In 1982 he joined the Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies at its Trinidad campus, monitoring volcanoes of the eastern Caribbean, before returning to the UK to work as a senior research fellow in the department of meteorology at the University of Reading.

In 1985 he was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council to undertake an assessment of the Soufrière Hills volcano in Monstserrat, in collaboration with the Seismic Research Unit in Trinidad. The resulting report, written with a colleague, Michael Isaacs, was delivered in 1987 to the government of Montserrat, and warned that the volcano could soon become active again; it did indeed begin to erupt in 1995 and continued to do so until 2010. Later he chaired the Scientific Advisory Committee for Montserrat, responsible for assessment of the hazard and risk relating to the Soufrière Hills volcano, from 2003 to 2014.

Geoff worked at Reading University until his retirement in 2020, spending the last eight years there as director of its Environmental Systems Science Centre, focusing on environmental data, remote sensing and Earth observation. In 2015 he was awarded the Murchison Medal by the Geological Society of London.

Among his other interests, Geoff had a passion for Morris dancing, which he taught to staff at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. He also loved Caribbean music, and once, at a conference, accompanied the Montserratian singer Arrow in a rendition of his global hit Hot, Hot, Hot.

In 1982 Geoff married Linda Grace, a bookkeeper. She survives him, along with their children, Hester and Sam, and grandson Alfred.