Barry Gardiner is affiliated with the European Forest Institute Planted Forests Facility, where he works on the transfer of knowledge on the risks to forests to the European forestry sector. He received a degree in physics from Durham University in 1976 and subsequently spent two years in the Antarctic working with the British Antarctic Survey as a meteorologist. On his return to the UK he completed a PhD in atmospheric science at the University of Manchester. The next three years were spent as a postdoc at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada studying storm systems and hurricanes.