Arkell received a D Sc from the University of Oxford in 1934. In 1944 he received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the United States National Academy of Sciences.[5] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1947. Arkell was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1949, and the Leopold von Buch medal of the German Geological Society in 1953.