Ronald Karel

Karel, a Turkish native who holds dual French‐Turkish citizenship, is a scientist who has specialized in the links between cloud formation and earthquakes through an interest in meteorology. He holds an executive membership of GeoCosmo International, an organisation affiliated with NASA, which aims is to establish a scientific understanding of pre-earthquake science necessary for creating a true global earthquake forecast system.[5] He first noticed the link between abnormal cloud formation and onset of an earthquake at the age of 16, after working for two years on weather forecasting.[6][7] He has delivered numerous talks about his approaches for earthquake prediction and related findings at various platforms.

During his whole childhood, he experienced a huge criticism from his family and society for his desire to pursue a career in meteorological weather forecasting. In spite of hardship, he continued studying meteorological sciences on his own and coined the "Meteoquake" theory of earthquake prediction in early 1970s. He even visited organisations like UNESCO (Paris), Imperial College London, University of Jussieu (Paris), New York University, Russian Academy of Sciences, NOAA (Boulder, Colorado), and travelled many countries in Europe to convince researchers about his findings but could not convince any significant body except Japan Meteorological Agency. His theory got rejection for 30 years. He was working in isolation on this theory, that is earthquakes and abnormal clouds could be linked together, until early 1980s when his work on Earthquake Precursors Sciences was finally recognised by many scientists around the world including Dr Friedemann Freund and his team from NASA.[8][9]

Support letter from Beijing FUDU Natural Disaster Prediction Techniques Application Co.,Ltd.

A congratulation letter from Dr. Genderen of ITC, Netherlands, to Ronald Karel for his outstanding contribution in the science of earthquake prediction.

In 2003, Bulgarian geologist Margarita Matova traveled to Istanbul and during a scientific conference she mentioned that before 1999 Kocaeli earthquake her team have discovered abnormal cloud circulation over Marmara sea. That was few of the strong initial backings of Karel's Meteoquake theory.

Though his work was initially difficult for a large section of scientific community to accept, other scientists like Prof Dr Genderen from Netherlands were slowly beginning to point to evidence that may point to a link between earthquakes and cloud formation. Dr. Friedemann Freund has also provided laboratories evidences that massive air ionization at the ground-to-air interface may be linked to the build-up of tectonic stresses in Earth's crust prior to a major earthquake, thereby providing for the first time a physical explanation for unusual clouds formation.[10]

The ionized cloud formation and other precursors trigger when activation of electronic charge carriers occur in rocks within the earth crust. These rocks then begin to experience higher and higher level of stresses during the build up of a major earthquake. He alone, only by observing cloud anomaly, has reported to have predicted an earthquake in Turkey's Central Aegean-Eastern Marmara region five days prior to hit.[11][12]

During 2014 one of the biggest editor Destek Yayınları published Ronald Karel's life story and research. Many newspapers have published and advertised his book, entitled Deprem Habercisi Bulut. He has also been on one to one TV show at Canal B.[13][14][15][16]

Since then several research groups from around the world have started to express their interest in the Meteoquake theory. On 12 December 2014 Ronald Karel was invited to a conference at NASA Ames Research Center to explain his Meteoquake theory and findings.