CV
Present appointment
I am currently holding a postdoctoral research position at the University of Reading, funded by NERC under the ‘Pushing the Frontiers’ opportunity. The project is titled “Why have space weather forecasts not improved for over a decade?” and focuses on exploring the use of data assimilation in solar wind forecasting.
Education
PhD in Space Weather, University of Reading with Met Office Funding – 2020 to 2024
Thesis title: Forecast improvements from solar wind data assimilation.
Supervisors: Prof. Mathew Owens, Dr Matthew Lang, Dr Mike Marsh (Met Office) and Dr Siegfried Gonzi (Met Office). A copy of my thesis can be found here.
BSc Environmental Physics (first class), University of Reading – 2016 to 2019
Selected courses: Weather and Climate Fundamentals, Climate Change, Space Weather, Atmospheric Physics, Surface Energy Exchange, Global Environmental Chemistry, Atmospheric Electricity.
Dissertation title: Detecting and Quantifying the Effect of Contrails on Surface Irradiances.
Dissertation supervisor: Prof. Keith Shine.
Awarded the BSc prize for highest mark in my cohort (78%).
Academic experience
Placement at the Met Office – June 2023
The Met Office provided CASE sponsorship for my PhD. I completed a 3 week placement to get the data assimilation scheme running on the Met Office system.
Media and Outreach
- Contributed an article to the University of Reading’s ‘Research Highlights’ publication – June 2024
- Spoke on BBC Radio Berkshire about my work – June 2023
- Press release about my 2023 paper – May 2023
- Departmental blog post about European Space Weather Week – November 2022
- MIST nugget about data assimilation and the solar wind – June 2022
- Departmental blog post about diagnosing solar wind forecast errors – August 2021
Demonstrating and marking
- Statistics for Weather and Climate Science masters module marking – 2022 & 2023
- Experiencing the Weather field course demonstrating – October 2021
Organisation
- Organiser of the Space and Atmospheric Electricity (SPATE) research group, arranging internal and external speakers and social events – January 2021 to April 2023
- Organised departmental ball, raising £1500 for charity – May 2022
- PhD cohort representative, reporting feedback to the board of directors – 2020 to 2024
Skills
IT and computing
- Proficient use of Python for data analysis and statistical methods.
- Experience with numerical modelling.
- Attended software development training as part of my PhD.
- Adaptation of other users’ code for use in my own work, such as working with the BRaVDA code.
- Integration of code with Git for version control and working on collaborative projects.
- Experience of batch computing on computing clusters.
Research and data
- Experience with different data types, e.g. NetCDF, CDF, HDF5, CSV.
- Generation of forecast datasets from the data assimilation output.
- Extensive analysis and verification of the solar wind data assimilation forecast scheme.
Presentation and publication
- Numerous presentations of my own work to both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
- Scientific writing: three first-author publications and contributions to further co-author publications.
- Non-scientific writing: numerous blog posts and short reports on my work, including contribution to the production of a press release about my work and writing an entry for the University of Reading’s ‘Research Highlights’ publication.
- Reviewed a paper for the Space Weather journal. Partly due to my contribution, the verdict was ‘reject and refer’.
Selected conferences and presentations
Poster at European Space Weather Week, Portugal – November 2024
Presented a poster on the initial work undertaken during my postdoctoral research position.
Invited talk and chaired session at the UK Space Weather and Space Environment Meeting – September 2024
I was invited to give a talk and to chair a session at the 4-day UKSWSE meeting, celebrating 10-years of 24/7 operational space weather forecast in the UK.
Invited seminar at MSSL, UCL – June 2023
Invited to Mullard Space Science Laboratory (part of UCL) to give a seminar on the implications of my work on the ESA Vigil mission.
Session chair at Spring MIST, University of Birmingham – October 2022
Invited to co-chair the solar session at the Spring conference of the Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial (MIST) group.
Presentation at European Space Weather Week, Zagreb – October 2022
Presentation about the preliminary work ahead of my 2023 paper.
Publications
Edward-Inatimi, N. O., Owens, M. J., Barnard, L., Turner, H., Marsh, M., Gonzi, S., Lang, M., and Riley, P. (2024). Adapting Ensemble-Calibration Techniques to Probabilistic Solar-Wind Forecasts. Space Weather, 22. DOI.
Turner, H., Lang, M., Owens, M., Smith, A., Riley, P., Marsh, M., and Gonzi, S. (2023). Solar wind data assimilation in an operational context: Use of near-real-time data and the forecast value of an L5 monitor. Space Weather, 21. DOI.
Chakraborty, N., Turner, H., Owens, M., and Lang, M. (2023). Causal Analysis of Influence of the Solar Cycle and Latitudinal Solar-Wind Structure on Corotation Forecasts. Solar Physics, 298. DOI.
Woodfield, E., Smith, A., Daggitt, T. and Turner, H. (2023). MIST Reunited. Astronomy & Geophysics, 64 (3). 3.30 - 3.33. ISSN 1468 - 4004. DOI.
Turner, H., Owens, M., Lang, M., Gonzi, P., and Riley, P. (2022). Quantifying the effect of ICME removal and observation age for in situ solar wind data assimilation. Space Weather, 20. DOI.
Owens, M., Chakraborty, N., Turner, H., Lang, M., Riley, P., Lockwood, M., Barnard, L., and Chi, Y. (2022). Rate of Change of Large-Scale Solar-Wind Structure. Solar Physics, 297. DOI.
Turner, H., Owens, M., Lang, M., and Gonzi, S. (2021). The influence of spacecraft latitudinal offset on the accuracy of corotation forecasts. Space Weather, 19. DOI.
Lang, M., Witherington, J., Turner, H., Owens, M., and Riley, P. (2021). Improving solar wind forecasting using data assimilation. Space Weather, 19. DOI.