Kerry Emanuel
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Emanuel in 2016
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| Born | (1955-04-21) April 21, 1955 (age 69) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Dynamics, hurricanes |
| Awards | Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Meteorology |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Thesis | Inertial stability and mesoscale convective systems (1978) |
| Doctoral advisor | Jule Charney |
| Website | eapsweb |
Kerry Andrew Emanuel (born April 21, 1955) is an American professor of meteorology currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyinCambridge. In particular he has specialized in atmospheric convection and the mechanisms acting to intensify hurricanes.
He hypothesized in 1994 about a superpowerful type of hurricane which could be formed if average sea surface temperature increased another 15C more than it's ever been (see "hypercane").
In a March 2008 paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, he put forward the conclusion that global warming is likely to increase the intensity but decrease the frequency of hurricane and cyclone activity.[1] Gabriel Vecchi, of NOAA said of Emanuel's announcement, "While his results don't rule out the possibility that global warming has contributed to the recent increase in activity in the Atlantic, they suggest that other factors—possibly in addition to global warming—are likely to have been substantial contributors to the observed increase in activity."[2]
Along with Daniel H. Rothman, Emanuel co-founded the MIT Lorenz Center in 2011, named for Edward N. Lorenz.[3][4]
In 2012, Emanuel served as keynote speaker for a conference for Republican voters concerned about climate change. Following the conference, the blog Climate Depot posted Emanuel's email address. After the conference and the exposure of Emanuel's email address on blogs, Emanuel received a large volume of emails "laced with menacing language, expletives, and personal threats of violence," according to editor James West of Mother Jones.[5]
In 2013, with other leading experts, he was co-author of an open letter to policy makers, which stated that "continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change."[6]
He was named one of the Time 100 influential people of 2006.[7] In 2007, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.[8] He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2020.[9]
The weight of available evidence suggests that multidecadal variability of hurricane season tropical Atlantic SST and Northern Hemispheric surface temperature... is controlled mostly by time-varying radiative forcing owing to solar variability, major volcanic eruptions, and anthropogenic sulfate aerosols and greenhouse gases, though the response to this forcing may be modulated by natural modes of variability.
I didn't expect to get people's attention with this paper," he says, "but the timing, so close to Katrina, may have helped wake them up some.
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