UCT academic honoured with Royal Meteorological Society Award

University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Professor of Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences in the Department of Oceanography, Professor Chris Reason, has been announced as one of the international Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) award winners for 2022 in the Geoscience Data Journal (GDJ) Editors’ Award division.

Professor Reason shared this award with Dr Liqiang Xu of the Hefei University of Technology. They were selected for their dedicated service as associate editors of the GDJ. The RMetS said they have always handled their assignments with care and speed. Specifically, they handled nine and seven manuscripts, respectively, with an average processing time of three months, excelling among their editorial team. Both have been awarded in recognition of their outstanding contributions.

The RMetS awards recognise people and teams who have made exceptional contributions relating to weather, climate and associated disciplines, and are considered one of the most prestigious accolades in meteorology, with a history dating back to 1901. The RMetS said it was delighted to announce the awardees receiving outstanding entries from across the international community, including for several new awards.

Research interests

Reason’s research interests include Southern Hemisphere climate change and variability with the focus on southern and East Africa, mesoscale and coastal meteorology, extreme weather events, ocean and atmospheric modelling, and physical oceanography of the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans. He was a lead author on the Fifth Assessment Report of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group I.

“It has been a privilege and an honour for me to have served as an associate editor of this journal.”

In his acceptance speech, Reason said: “It has been a privilege and an honour for me to have served as an associate editor of this journal since it was introduced by the Royal Meteorological Society. Under the wise and capable leadership of founding chief editor, Rob Allan, and more recently, co-chief editors, Katherine Royse and Jian Peng, GDJ has filled an important niche in the scientific literature by facilitating the publication of high-quality data sets in the various fields of the earth sciences.

“By so doing, it helps promote cross-disciplinarity between these diverse fields and raises awareness between different communities of what data exists and how such data were derived, together with any limitations that may exist. In many cases, dataset developers are the unrecognised heroes of the scientific profession and GDJ offers one significant way in which these key workers can be recognised for their crucial contributions to advancing science for the benefit of all. I believe that GDJ will continue fulfilling this fundamental role in science, widening the exposure and timely publication of newly developed, innovative data sets throughout the earth sciences.”

Call for Nominations: RMetS 2023 Awards

RMetS has made a call for the 2023 nominations. Nominations are welcome from across the international meteorological community.

• Read more about the awards and the nomination process.
• Read more about the 2022 award winners, including citations and acceptance messages.