The geographer Professor Tony Chandler was known for his important work on the urban climate of greater London. His book The Climate of London remains without peer as a comprehensive account of a city’s climate, and contains original research and interpretations that helped to steer the thinking involved in the process-orientated work which followed.

Tony John Chandler was born in Leicester and attended Hinckley Grammar School and then Alderman Newton Boys’ School in Leicester. In 1946 he entered King’s College, University of London, from which he graduated with a BSc special degree in geography with mathematics. He then took a teacher’s diploma at the University of London, and spent his period of national service (1950-52) teaching meteorology and Commonwealth studies to servicemen at RAF Cranwell. In 1952 he was appointed assistant lecturer at Birkbeck College and proceeded to work on a masters degree. At the end of his third year at Birkbeck he was promoted to lecturer. Chandler joined UCL as lecturer in 1956, becoming later reader (1965) and professor (1969).

His innovative doctoral research grew out of the London Climatological Survey, which had two distinct strands. The first involved operating a mobile recording station in a Land Rover that he drove across London along carefully chosen traverses to register temperature and humidity conditions at various hours of the day and night. The second involved encouraging more than 60 schools, teacher training colleges and private individuals to maintain climatological recording stations. The survey attracted the attention of geographers, meteorologists, town planners and architects in the UK and abroad. Its methods and findings, especially the “urban heat island” and London’s pattern of air pollution, were discussed widely. In 1964 Chandler submitted his doctoral thesis, from which The Climate of London rapidly emerged.

Another project involved making air temperature and humidity traverses across Leicester and Brighton. As Chandler’s reputation grew, he was invited to international meetings and he convened the joint World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)/World Health Organisation Symposium on Urban Climates and Building Climatology, held in Brussels in 1968.

He was on the editorial board of Weather (1958-61), a member of the Council of the Royal Meteorological Society (1961-64) and Secretary of the RMS in the early 1970s. He served on various committees of the Royal Geographical Society (receiving the prestigious Back Award in 1963) and he was also a consultant to the UK Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston.

In 1970 he began his chairmanship of the British National Committee for Geography working group to prepare evidence to submit to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

In 1973 Chandler was appointed Chair of Geography at the University of Manchester, and he became head of the department the following year. He was also chairman of the Pollution Research Unit in the University of Manchester. He co-edited The Climate of the British Isles (with S. Gregory, 1976) and wrote various short works, reports and articles. His long list of external commitments included the vice-presidency of the Royal Meteorological Society (1973-75).

Early in 1977 Chandler was appointed Master (President) of Birkbeck College. He resigned on medical grounds in January 1979. Ten years later he was made an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL and a Visiting Professor at King’s College.

His wife, Margaret Joyce (née Weston), whom he married in 1954, predeceased him. He is survived by a son and daughter.

Professor Tony Chandler, geographer, was born on November 7, 1928. He died on July 17, 2008, aged 80