Dr. David D. Turner is the chief of the verification and assessment branch within the Global Systems Laboratory, and the Manager of Atmospheric Science for Renewable Energy (ASRE) Program. The focus of Dr. Turner’s research is to better understand various processes that act upon and within the boundary layer (e.g., convective initiation, turbulent redistribution of water vapor, aerosol, and energy, land-atmosphere interactions, etc.) and ultimately to improve the representation of these processes within numerical weather prediction and climate models.
Part of Dr. Turner’s work includes continuing to develop and mature different ground-based profiling technologies to measure the temperature, humidity, and turbulent structure of the boundary layer, and using these observations to gain insight into how well NWP models (such as the HRRR) are representing atmospheric processes and evolution. Improvement in these processes will not only enable better forecasts of impactful (severe) weather, but also greatly benefit the renewable energy community.