Professor Tim Palmer, co-director of the Oxford Martin School's Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, has been named a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Announcing its 2013 class of fellows, the AGU said the honour was given to members who had "made exceptional scientific contributions and attained acknowledged eminence in the fields of Earth and space science". The fellows programme was established in 1962, and not more than 0.1 per cent of all members receive the designation in any given year.

Professor Palmer, who is also a principal investigator of the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship, will be recognised during the AGU's Honours Tribute at its 2013 Fall Meeting, which will take place in December.

His citation reads: "For fundamental understanding of the predictability of weather and climate, and for pioneering the tools to estimate such predictability."

The union, estabilished in 1919, is dedicated to the furtherance of the geophysical sciences through the individual efforts of its members (currently numbering 61,000 worldwide) and in co-operation with other national and international scientific organisations.