An external view of the Met Office building at night.

Dr Emma Turner

Emma works on the development of radiative transfer codes to simulate satellite observations.

Areas of expertise:

  • Atmospheric radiative transfer

  • Continuum absorption

  • Microwave spectroscopy

  • Satellite observations

Publications by Dr Emma Turner

Current activities

Emma is a scientist working in the RTTOV (Radiative Transfer for TOVS) group, a subset of the Satellite Applications team. RTTOV is developed in collaboration with Météo-France and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as part of the NWP SAF, which is funded by EUMETSAT. RTTOV is a fast model for simulating satellite radiances and Emma’s focus is on those simulations covering the microwave part of the spectrum using the line-by-line code AMSUTRAN. Emma has worked on improving the spectroscopy in the 300 – 1000 GHz region of the spectrum in readiness for the new generation of space-borne sub-millimetre instruments, with a focus on water vapor continuum. Current work includes adding the Zeeman effect to RT simulations of channels affected by the Earth’s magnetic field.

Career background

Emma joined the Met Office in October 2015. She has an MSci in Physics from Imperial College London (2002-2006). Her PhD was undertaken at the University of Edinburgh with Professor Simon Tett, and focused on evaluating spectral radiances simulated by the HadGEM2 global climate model using longwave satellite measurements (2010-2014). Following that, she worked as a post-doc on the SPECTRO-ICE project, a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey, that looked at the potential of applying detector technology developed for astronomy to atmospheric science at sub-millimetre/far infrared wavelengths. Prior to joining Satellite Applications, Emma worked in the Clouds and Radiation group of the Atmospheric Processes and Parameterisations team at the Met Office, and helped develop the radiation code (SOCRATES) used in the Unified Model. She worked on a project investigating an improved parameterisation of the UV index.