Time Magazine ‘Most Influential’ Scientist to Discuss Hurricanes, Global Warming in UA-Hosted Talk

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – One of Time magazine’s top 100 influential people of 2006 will discuss the influence global climate may have on hurricane activity at the Alabama Perspectives on Sustainability and Climate Change, or APSACC, series at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 in the Biology Building auditorium, room 127, on The University of Alabama campus.

In his lecture, “Is Global Warming Affecting Hurricanes?,” Dr. Kerry Emanuel will review historical records of hurricane activity, which have large variability from one decade to the next, and discuss how much of this variability is random, how much can be said to be part of natural, regional, or global climate fluctuations (such as El Nino), and how much is tied to man-made global climate change. These are important questions for scientists and non-scientists to ask, according to Emanuel, because their answers bear on the pressing question of how hurricane activity might change during the next century.

Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received his bachelor’s degree in Earth and planetary science from MIT in 1976 and his doctorate in meteorology from MIT in 1978. He is the author of “Divine Wind: The History of Science and Hurricanes,” and also is prominently featured in the Chris Mooney book, “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.”

The Alabama Perspectives on Sustainability and Climate Change lecture series, known as APSACC, is sponsored by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and its department of physics and astronomy and New College program. The series is in its second year at UA.

For more information about APSACC, visit http://www.as.ua.edu/apsacc.