[Houghton Lecture] Kerry Emanuel (MIT) – History of Hurricane Research

Abstract:
The annual number of peer-reviewed scientific papers has grown approximately exponentially over the past half-century. Researchers wishing to place their work in historical context face an increasingly daunting accumulation of papers to review. Perhaps for this reason, it is increasingly rare to see citations of papers written much more than 10 years before a paper’s publication date. Despite greatly improved scholarly search capabilities and the advent of A.I.-generated synthesis of prior work, it is easy to lose sight of the essential history of a subdiscipline, and easier to accidentally repeat prior work. With this in mind, I will review the history of hurricane research, placing much weight on its early history, and suggest that authors of scientific papers make an effort to cite the most relevant, not just the most recent, work.

About our speaker:
Dr. Kerry Emanuel is the Cecil and Ida Green post-tenure professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was on the faculty from 1981 to 2022. Before that he was on the faculty of UCLA from 1978 to 1981.

Emanuel’s initial focus was on the dynamics of rain and snow banding in winter storms, but his interests gradually migrated to the meteorology of the tropics and to climate change. His specialty is hurricane physics and he was the first to investigate how long-term climate change might affect hurricane activity, an issue that continues to occupy him today. His interests also include cumulus convection, and advanced methods of sampling the atmosphere in aid of numerical weather prediction.

Emanuel is the author or co-author of over 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and three books, including Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, published by Oxford University Press and aimed at a general audience, and What We Know about Climate Change, published by the MIT Press and now entering its third edition. His graduate textbook “Physics of the Tropical Atmosphere and Tropical Cyclones” will be published by Princeton University Press in 2026. He was a co-founder and co-director of MIT’s Lorenz Center, a climate think tank devoted to basic, curiosity-driven climate research. He is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of WindRiskTech, LLC, which provides clients with advanced synthetic tropical cyclone events sets for assessing current and future tropical cyclone risks worldwide.

Houghton Lecture Series

Supported by the Houghton Fund, Houghton Lecturers are distinguished visitors from outside MIT, invited by the EAPS Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate (PAOC) to spend a period of time, ranging from a week to several months, as scientists-in-residence.

Contact: kbauer@mit.edu