Kerry Emanuel


Kerry Andrew Emanuel is an American professor of meteorology currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In particular he has specialized in atmospheric convection and the mechanisms acting to intensify hurricanes.

Research

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.
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. 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."

Lorenz Center

Along with Daniel Rothman, Emanuel co-founded the MIT Lorenz Center in 2011, named for Edward N. Lorenz.

2012 threats

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.

Nuclear power views

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."

Recognition

He was named one of the Time 100 influential people of 2006.
In 2007, he was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2020.

Selected publications