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Episode 22 Dr Kerry Emanuel Discusses Hurricane Prediction and Projection

209 views · Published 18 April 2017 · 1:02:52 · Indexed 30 October 2026

Channel: TheIHMC · 2017 · Education

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Full show notes are available at http://ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-22/

Hurricanes are a leading source of insured losses, and a major cause of human and economics loss in the world. But from an insider’s view, they are also breathtakingly beautiful. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a leading hurricane expert, compares flying into the eye of a hurricane to being inside a white Coliseum, thirty to forty miles wide, with walls resembling “a cascade of ice crystals.”

That’s just one of the fascinating tidbits from this episode of STEM-Talk, with Dr. Emanuel, whom Time Magazine named as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006. The following year, Dr. Emanuel was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

He is a professor of meteorology at MIT, where he also completed his Ph.D. When he returned to teach there, he taught a course in meteorology of the tropics, and discovered that the existing theory of hurricanes was partly wrong. He’s spent the better part of his career disproving that theory and coming up with better theories of hurricane development and progression.

Dr. Emanuel is also a book author of “What We Know About Climate Change,” http://amzn.to/2cWYQ7O and “Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes.” http://amzn.to/2dPXrNb

His recent lecture at IHMC is entitled “Hurricane Risk: Past, Present and Future”:  https://www.ihmc.us/lectures/20160324/

STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis interviews Dr. Emanuel about his career, the future of climate change and its impact on hurricane development, and the future of hurricane projection and prediction.

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