William Turner

Biography

Will Turner began working with the UCSB Climate Hazards Center as an undergraduate intern in June 2013. In 2017, Will graduated from UCSB with a B.S. in Physical Geography and Environmental Studies and was hired to the Center as a full-time Junior Specialist. Now, Will is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCSB Geography Department, working with Prof. Charles Jones (Earth Research Institute), Drs. Greg Husak and Chris Funk (Climate Hazards Center), and Prof. Kathy Baylis (EDGE Lab). Will's interests encompass the use of remotely sensed data (e.g., vegetation indices, precipitation, evapotranspiration) to monitor crop phenology, crop-water demands, and climate-related food insecurity. Notably, Will helped to implement the Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI) to be used in IDL, and is the curator of the CHC Early Estimates.

Selected Publications

Hobbins, M., Jansma, T., Sarmiento, D., McNally, A., Magadzire, T., Jayanthi, H., Turner, W., Hoell, A., Husak, G., Senay, G., Boiko, O., Budde, M., Mogane, P., Dewes, C. (2023). A global long-term daily reanalysis of reference evapotranspiration for drought and food-security monitoring. Scientific Data, 10, 746. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02648-4

Turner, W. A., Husak, G., Funk, C., Roberts, D. A., & Jones, C. (2022). An Improved Climatological Forecast Method for Projecting End-of-Season Water Requirement Satisfaction Index. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 23(8), 1281–1295. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-21-0184.1

Harrison L, Landsfeld M, Husak G, Davenport F, Shukla S, Turner W, Peterson P, & Funk C. (2022). Advancing early warning capabilities with CHIRPS-compatible NCEP GEFS precipitation forecasts. Scientific Data, 9, 375. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01468-2

Funk, C., Peterson, P., Huffman, G. J., Landsfeld, M. F., Peters-Lidard, C., Davenport, F., Shukla, S., Peterson, S., Pedreros, D. H., Ruane, A. C., Mutter, C., Turner, W., Harrison, L., Sonnier, A., Way-Henthorne, J., & Husak, G. J. (2022). Introducing and evaluating the Climate Hazards center IMErg with Stations (CHIMES)—Timely station-enhanced Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1–52. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0245.1

Krell, N., Davenport, F., Harrison, L., Turner, W., Peterson, S., Shukla, S., Marter-Kenyon, J., Husak, G., Evans, T., & Caylor, K. (2022). Using real-time mobile phone data to characterize the relationships between small-scale farmers’ planting dates and socio-environmental factors. Climate Risk Management, 35, 100396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2022.100396

Funk C, Way-Henthorne J, & Turner W. (2021). Phenological water balance applications for trend analyses and risk management. Frontiers in Climate, 3. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.716588

Funk, C., Turner, W., McNally, A., Hoell, A., Harrison, L., Galu, G., Slinski, K., Way-Henthorne, J., & Husak, G. (2021). An agro-pastoral phenological water balance framework for monitoring and predicting growing season water deficits and drought stress. Frontiers in Climate, 3, 88. https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.716568

Davenport F, Shukla S, Turner W, Funk C, Krell N, Harrison L, Husak G, Donghoon L, & Peterson S. (2021). Sending out an S.O.S.: Using Start of Rainy Season Indicators for Market Price Forecasting to Support Famine Early Warning. Environmental Research Letters, 16(8). https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac15cc

Pinchoff J, Turner W, & Grace K. (2021). The association between agricultural conditions and multiple dimensions of undernutrition in children 6-23 months of age in Burkina Faso. Environmental Research Communications, 3(6), 065004. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac07f5

Shukla S, Husak G, Turner W, Davenport F, Funk C, Harrison L, & Krell, N. (2021). A slow rainy season onset is a reliable harbinger of drought in most food insecure regions in Sub-Saharan Africa. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0242883. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242883