Prof. Andrew Turner, PhD
Twitter feed
Tweets by @agturnermonsoonBlogs and other authored articles
- UoR Department of Meteorology blog on the summer 2016 INCOMPASS field campaign: Flying through the Indian monsoon, 28 November 2016.
- UoR Department of Meteorology blog on aerosol pollution and the monsoon: Climate change and the Indian monsoon: another emissions problem, 29 June 2015.
- India is missing its monsoon, and El Niño could be the culprit, solicited article in The Conversation, 21 July 2014.
- UoR Department of Meteorology blog on seasonal forecasting of the 2014 monsoon: As monsoon season approaches, a billion people await the seasonal forecast, 28 April 2014.
- UoR Staff Portal news article featuring a solicited comment on the usefulness of the new INSAT-3D weather satellite launch for India, featuring equipment from Systems Engineering, 30 July 2013.
- Insight article in environmentalresearchweb relating to this paper on sytematic sea-surface temperature biases in the Arabian Sea, 1 May 2013.
- The Indian summer monsoon of 2012 (Reading Meteorology Weather and Climate Discussion blog, 26 October 2012)
- Indian Monsoon in a Changing Climate (RMetS article in their Climate Series, 15 October 2012)
- Where will the future take the South Asian monsoon? (Reading Meteorology Weather and Climate Discussion blog, 2 March 2012)
- Heavy monsoon rainfall and flooding in Pakistan (Reading Meteorology Weather and Climate Discussion blog, 5 August 2010)
Press releases - general
- Science Media Centre expert reaction to the WMO State of the Global Climate 2021 launch, 18 May 2022.
- UoR press release: #PlanetPartners: Reading scientists part of stark UN climate report, referring to the IPCC AR6 WGI launch, 9 August 2021.
- UoR press release: #PlanetPartners: Early Indian monsoon forecasts could benefit farmers for paper Forecast skill of the Indian monsoon and its onset in the ECMWF seasonal forecasting system 5 (SEAS5), 9 February 2021.
- NERC and RCUK press releases: Indian and UK scientists team up to tackle monsoon for Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey's comments on the launch of the NERC/MoES Drivers of Variability in the South Asia Monsoon programme, of which my INCOMPASS project is one of three components. | Associated UK Government news article. | Hugh Coe's University of Manchester press release.
- UoR press release for appointments under the Academic Investment Programme (AIP), including my own. | Related article in THE.
- University of Hawaii/SOEST press release for this review on climate change and the South Asian monsoon.
- UoR press release for this paper on snow-monsoon teleconnections.
- UoR press release in response to this season's poor Indian monsoon rainfall: Erratic Indian monsoon could be a sign of things to come.
- UoR press release for this paper on future projections of subseasonal variability of monsoon rainfall.
- Scientific consultant (content and script advisory) for BBC Natural History series Wonders of the Monsoon Latest news | Promotional trailer | Episode guide | Ganges photo
- Content and script advisory for monsoon content on BBC Series Orbit (23 Degrees) link
- Discussion commentary on a recent paper by Australian researchers (Wenju Cai et al.) on more frequent extreme Indian Ocean Dipole events in the future: Indian Ocean extreme weather on BBC World Service Science in Action first broadcast 12 June 2014. |
Devastating droughts and crippling floods could become many, many, times more frequent in areas as far spread as India, Australia, the east of Africa, and Indonesia. These all border the Indian Ocean, and extreme climate and weather events are predicted to become more common as greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. This warning comes from scientists in India, China and Japan, who modelled the effects of CO2 on a climate cycle known as the Indian Ocean dipole. Dr. Andrew Turner, a lecturer in Monsoon Systems at the University of Reading in the UK, explains more.|"I was very impressed with the clarity and the way you explained the complex issue and got the key points across. I know how hard it is for academics to do this. Great work!" I.F., University of Dundee.
- Various radio work relating to the Pakistan floods of August 2010:
- Live interview with Phil Gayle on BBC Radio Berkshire, from 7am on 20 August 2010.
- Recorded interview with Radio France International broadcast during news updates on 15 August 2010. RFI news article on the same story. This interview was subsequently quoted on Prevention Web, "serving the information needs of the disaster reduction community".
- Live interview on Midlands Masala - Pakistan Floods Special presented by Satnam Rana on BBC Radio West Midlands and BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire, 7pm 8 August 2010.
- Discovery: Science and Food on BBC World Service: BBC Senior Broadcast Journalist Andrew Luck-Baker looks at the research aimed at predicting crop production and quantifying food insecurity as climate changes in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In this programme I talk about climate change projections for India and how they may effect crops. (March 2008)
- Quoted in The Irish Times article ‘Alarming new records’ for climate change set last year, says WMO by Kevin O'Sullivan, 18 May 2022, commenting on the WMO State of the Global Climate in 2021 report.
- Solicited quotes in a BBC Future online magazine article The uncertain fate of Asia's monsoons by Kamala Thiagarajan, 18 May 2022.
- Mentioned in an incorrect Times of India article Kerala vulnerable to cloud-burst events: Study by Sudha Nambudiri, 25 November 2021, following my plenary talk at INTROMET-2021 |
The article makes a nonsensical claim, incorrectly attributed to my talk, about the future of the South Asian monsoon that is not supported by the latest IPCC 6th Assessment Report. Specifically, the Technical Summary Box TS.13 states: During the 21st century, global land monsoon precipitation is projected to increase in response to GHG warming in all time horizons and scenarios (high confidence). Over South and Southeast Asia, East Asia and the central Sahel, monsoon precipitation is projected to increase...
- Quoted in The Guardian article Global water crisis will intensify with climate breakdown, says report by Fiona Harvey, 17 August 2021
- Repeated in Yahoo! News
- Quoted from there in natureworldnews.com Worsening Climate Crisis May Intensify Global Water Shortage, Says New Report by Rain Jordan, 18 August 2021
- Quoted in The Sunday Post article UN scientists behind Code Red report sound alarm over proposed Cambo oil field off Shetland by Mark Aitken, August 15th 2021
- Interviewed for OneIndia.com Exclusive: IPCC के वैज्ञानिक ने जताई चिंता, कहा संकट में भारतीय कृषि by Ajay Mohan, 11 August 2021
- Solicited comments on a recent journal paper in Earth System Dynamics on climate change for the Indian monsoon:
- Independent article by Daisy Dunne, Climate Correspondent: India's monsoon rains to get 5% heavier for every 1C of global warming, study finds, 14 April 2021.
- DW (Deutsche Welle) article by Ajit Niranjan: Climate change makes Indian monsoon season stronger and more chaotic as above, 14 April 2021.
- Quoted in a pair of articles by Sahana Ghosh on the INCOMPASS field campaign and the importance of cloud microphysics:
- A Mongabay article, A journey through the clouds to improve Indian monsoon forecast, 5 March 2020.
- A Quartz India article, An Indian scientist flew along with the clouds to understand the monsoon, 6 March 2020.
- Mentions of Laura Wilcox's ACPD article (preprint):
- Article in The Guardian Drop in pollution may bring hotter weather and heavier monsoons, 5 March 2020.
- Article in the Daily Mail Dramatic cuts to air pollution in Europe and Asia could SPEED UP climate change in the short term and lead to heatwaves and heavier rainfall - but 'doing nothing would be worse', 13 May 2020.
- Quoted in a CarbonBrief article Explainer: Nine 'tipping points' that could be triggered by climate change, 10 February 2020.
- Quoted in a BBC news article commenting on the link between the severe Indian Ocean Dipole of autumn (fall) 2019 and the Australian bushfires, 7 December 2019.
- Quoted in a Scientific American / E&E news article Tug-of-War between Air Pollution and CO2 Masks Warming's Impacts commenting on the link between emissions of aerosol pollutants ans reduced monsoon rainfall, 24 May 2019.
- Quoted in news article in environmentalresearchweb relating to our paper on monsoon breaks and wind energy in India, 14 July 2015.
- Quoted in India Climate Dialogue article on Warming Indian Ocean, weakening monsoon relating to Roxy Mathew Koll's paper.
- Mentioned in India, UK join hands for research on South Asian monsoon article on our new joint NERC/MoES South Asia projects including INCOMPASS in the Economic Times of India, 27 August 2014.
- Quoted in Cyclone Phailin Hits India's East Coast Huffington Post article on severe weather in India, 12 October 2013.
- Comment on the floods in northern India during late June 2013 in the UN's IRIN humanitarian news and analysis site.
- Soliticed comment in Erin Wayman's ScienceNews: magazine of the society for science & the public article, 28 May 2013, commenting on a recent article on palaeomonsoon variability in PNAS.
- Soliticed comment in Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog for the New York Times, 22 March 2013, commenting on a recent article on monsoon decadal variability in PNAS.
- Comment in Il Venerdi di Repubblica article entitled Un mega software per il monsone, 3 August 2012, discussing the forthcoming National Monsoon Mission in India.
- Q&A in The New York Times green blog entitled Q. and A.: Climate Change and the Monsoon, 4 September 2012, following my recent review article in Nature Climate Change on the South Asian monsoon.
- Quoted in South Asian monsoon variations hard to fathom in SciDev Net article, 4 July 2012 of my recent review article in Nature Climate Change on the South Asian monsoon.
- Various citations in the media following my recent review article in Nature Climate Change on the South Asian monsoon:
- Global warming may hit monsoon in Deccan Herald article, 6 November, 2012.
- Lush Antarctic past suggests more monsoons in futuren in New Scientist article, 10 September 2012.
- Nonsensical article in Moneylife, 5 July 2012, with our
The article New study exposes NGO's climate smart agriculture as fraudulent paints an extremely distorted picture of our Nature Climate Change review article (Climate Change and the South Asian Monsoon, Nature Climate Change, doi:10.1038/nclimate1495), blatantly misrepresents the science and implies a viewpoint that we have not presented and do not support. The article states that climate science has no clue of monsoon behaviour- this is patently untrue. The scientific evidence (from basic theory and from a large number of climate modelling experiments) clearly suggests that as a whole monsoon rainfall will increase somewhat in the future and due to the expected increase in atmospheric moisture there is some evidence that rain will fall in heavier bursts. Such changes point to increased risk of flooding. However, there is a considerable range in the magnitude of the projected increase in rainfall and climate models do not agree on the local detail of how rainfall might change within South Asia. It is often such local detail that is most relevant when planning how to adapt to climate change, e.g., in the agriculture and infrastructure sectors. These disagreements between climate models are due to inaccuracies in the way current models represent some of the small scale physical processes, in part related to a lack of quality observations to constrain the models. As we argue in the Nature Climate Change paper, more reliable predictions of the future will be made when models can better simulate the local features of the monsoon and its variability on a range of timescales - from days to weeks and more. Such improvements are the focus of current monsoon research. Your article also perpetuates the old fallacy that one cannot predict the future climate many years ahead while there are still difficulties at making weather forecasts in the next days and weeks. The science of climate change is about expected changes in the probability of occurrences of certain weather events - such as monsoon droughts and floods; as models improve in conjunction with our better understanding of the physical system, we are in the right direction to reduce the uncertainties in future projections - this is doable as climate community has demonstrated the tremendous accomplishment in the few decades in understanding and predicting, for example, El Niño events. On the issue of Climate Smart Agriculture, of which we do not comment in our review, a cornerstone seems to be to enhance resilience and improve adaptation strategies. In our opinion, what better way to do this than improve the way that farmers adapt to variability in the current climate? The sort of floods or breaks in the monsoon that occur in recent and indeed all monsoon seasons have much larger impacts than the projected signals of future mean climate. The key to dealing with the changing climate will be to make sure that the adaptation strategies are themselves adaptable. In other words being able to adapt to current variations allows farmers and others to be able to make decisions even in the face of uncertainty in the climate models. Dr Andy Turner, Dr. H. Annamalai and Kathy Maskell
- Scientists still clueless on monsoon in Deccan Herald, 1 July 2012.
- South Asian monsoons to be impacted by climate change in ClimateAction article , 25 June 2012.
- Quoted in The Economic Times, 14 June 2012, commenting on statitical and dynamical forecasting methods for the Indian summer monsoon.
- Solicited quote in Science Now, 29 September 2011, commenting on a recent study attributing declines in parts of South Asia's rainfall to increasing aerosol loading.
- Quoted in IRIN humanitarian news and analysis, 24 August 2010, discussing the Pakistan flooding.
- Various articles on the results of my snow-monsoon teleconnections paper (April 2010):
- Heavy Himalayan snowfall cause of drought in India. Times of India article
- U.K. experts resolve Himalayan riddle. Article in The Hindu.
- Chasing the rainbow. Article in India Today magazine.
- Is snow a rain killer? Article written for Down to Earth magazine.
- How our changing climate is, and will be, affecting the Indian monsoon. Journalist Grace Boyle examines some of the science issues surrounding the effect of climate change on the Indian monsoon as part of her work with Greenpeace India, in this blog for The Independent.
- Meteogroup article about monsoon floods in South Asia (June 2007).
Press releases - INCOMPASS field campaign 2016
- 13 July 2016: MoES press briefing: Observational Campaign to study small-scale processes and large-scale monsoon variability under a Joint Indo-UK effort
- 12 July 2016: British Government press release: UK-India joint observational campaign to study monsoon variability. Dr Harsh Vardhan (Hon'ble Union Minister for Ministry of Science & Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences) and Dr Alexander Evans (British Deputy High Commissioner to India) boarded the UK's Atmospheric Research Aircraft to study monsoon variability in Lucknow.
- 11 July 2016. Newton Fund press release: Indian Science Minister participates in study on monsoon variability partly funded by Newton Fund
- 11 July 2016. RCUK press release: Indian Science Minister participates in the UK-India joint observational campaign to study monsoon variability
- 8 June 2016. Indian Press Information Bureau press release: Observational Campaign to study Small-Scale Processes and Large-Scale Monsoon Variability under a Joint Indo-UK Effort
- 25 May 2016. NERC press release for INCOMPASS and SWAAMI aircraft campaigns: Indian and UK researchers team up to reveal secrets of the monsoon | NERC Chief Executive Duncan Wingham said: This is the most ambitious atmospheric observation campaign that NERC has undertaken. The campaign will gather fresh data on the region in more detail than ever before, bringing together scientists from the UK and India to improve forecasts of the South Asian monsoon and to learn more about its potential impacts on the global climate..
- 26 August 2014. NERC and RCUK press releases: Indian and UK scientists team up to tackle monsoon for Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey's comments on the launch of the NERC/MoES Drivers of Variability in the South Asia Monsoon programme, of which my INCOMPASS project is one of three components. | Associated UK Government news article. | Hugh Coe's University of Manchester press release.
Newspaper/magazine appearances (incl. online) - INCOMPASS field campaign of 2016 (Andy Turner and colleagues)
- 14 March 2017. University of Reading scientist Dr Arathy Menon appears in Manoram Online newspaper article relating to her participation in the 2017 STEM for Britain competition at the House of Commons, UK:
- A newspaper cutting relating to this
- A further newspaper cutting relating to this
- Arathy's STEM for Britain poster
- 5 August 2016. Interviewed for article in Eastern Eye on the INCOMPASS field campaign and flights in India: Joint project Incompass study of factor's affecting India's monsoon by Sav D'Souza | PDF version
- 13 July 2016. Article in New Kerala.com on the Hon'ble Minsister's participation in INCOMPASS demonstration flight: India's Science Minister participates in the UK-India joint observational campaign to study monsoon variability
- 13 July 2016. Article in Cape Town Express citing Hon'ble Minsister's participation in INCOMPASS demonstration flight: India's Science Minister participates in the UK-India joint observational campaign to study monsoon variability
- 12 July 2016. Newspaper article in the Hindustan Times (Lucknow) on the INCOMPASS/SWAAMI aircraft campaign: "Rain-chasing" aircraft predicts good rainfall in UP after July 15. LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh will have widespread rainfall after July 15. Even the parched land of the Bundelkhand region, which has been facing drought for consecutive years, will also be adequately drenched, says the ongoing Indo-UK joint research using...
- 11 July 2016. Newspaper article in the Hindustan Times (Lucknow) "RAIN PLANE" TO TAKE OFF FROM LUCKNOW TODAY. INDO-UK PROJECT Research aircraft will collect data on rainfall process. LUCKNOW: The rain chasing research aircraft will take off on its final sortie from the Lucknow airport on Monday to collect data for understanding the cloud - aerosol rainfall process in the Indian monsoon environment. This final rain chasing sortie of...
- 7 July 2016. Interviewed by and quoted in the Hindustan Times (Lucknow) article on the establishment of our temporary radiosonde launch site at IIT-Kanpur using University of Reading equipment: To study atmosphere, IIT-K releases weather balloons. KANPUR: A team of five scientists, including two from United Kingdom (UK), released six weather balloons from the airstrip at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) here on Wednesday. The release of balloons, which will continue for two...
- 3 July 2016: Interviewed by and quoted in The Telegraph (Calcutta, India) article: The rainmen cometh. "Top international weather experts are working closely with Indian scientists to crack the monsoon code. T.V. Jayan reports that their research will lead to precise forecasts, helping farmers in a country where 60 per cent of arable land is still fed by the rains"
- 23 June 2016. Article in City Today on the INCOMPASS aircraft campaign: High-tech India-British experiment raises hopes
- 9 June 2016. Article in Sakai Times on the INCOMPASS aircraft campaign: Technology to boost monsoon predictions
- 9 June 2016. Listing on Education News Agency (India): Ministry of Earth Sciences launches joint observational campaign with Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK for Monsoon Variability
- 8 June 2016. Article in Daily Excelsior ("The largest circulated daily of Jammu and Kashmir") on the Monsoons Programme observational campaigns: India, UK to carry out joint observational campaign to study monsoon variability
- 8 June 2016. Article in Net Indian on the Monsoons Programme observational campaign: India-UK study on improving monsoon prediction begins
- Quoted in The Guardian article Global water crisis will intensify with climate breakdown, says report by Fiona Harvey, 17 August 2021
