WLRN Public Media reported on a series of National Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) grants aimed at the creation of a “new service—not unlike the National Weather Service —[that will provide] more specific projections to help planners and emergency managers.”  The project’s University of Miami (UM) principal investigator is Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) Deputy Director Dr. Ben Kirtman, William R. Middelthon Endowed Chair in Earth Sciences and Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Dr. Kirtman spoke about the course of action with WLRN Environment Editor Jenny Staletovich.

“Current climate predictions are often too broad for local planners and on time-scales that make it difficult for elected officials to decide budgeting,” Kirtman said. The hope is that this new service will allow local officials time to prepare so that risks can be avoided or at least lessened. The service will focus on short-term forecasts to address the risks associated with flooding, heat waves, and wildfires.

This new service will be bridging “the discrepancy between weather forecasting that relies heavily on historical trends, and climate projections that look forward using models incorporating evolving conditions. The past is not a good predictor anymore of what’s going to happen in the future,” Kirtman expounded. “And so they need to figure out how to do the forward problem.” To that end a total of $8.6 M ($5.8 + $2.8) will go to the University of Miami project team.

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About Ben Kirtman

The fall of 2023 brought much well-deserved acclaim to IDSC Deputy Director Dr. Ben Kirtman when he was selected as a 2023 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and honored as the inaugural William R. Middelthon III Endowed Chair of Earth Sciences. Created by philanthropist William R. Middelthon III to support research on disaster preparedness and climate variability, the endowed chair, Kirtman said, “will allow me to continue my research and teaching and to make a positive impact through my work.” Of the AGU Award Kirtman said “This award motivates me to ensure that what I do is actionable.”

Always in action to deliver operative forecasts to the Federal Government, Dr. Kirtman is understandably proud of the fact that the University of Miami has been the lead in the multi-agency/multi-institution effort to improve NOAA’s seasonal and sub-seasonal operative forecasts since 2015. His research aims to quantify the limits of climate predictability from days to decades, and examines how the climate will change in response to changes in anthropogenic (e.g. greenhouse gases) and natural (e.g. volcanoes) forcing elements. His research also involves hypothesis-testing numerical experiments using sophisticated state-of-the-art climate models, experimental real-time prediction, and advanced computing/machine learning, and has been supported by numerous grants from the NSF, Department of Energy, NOAA, NASA, and the Office of Naval Research.

Since 2014, Kirtman has led the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME), a seasonal forecasting system that has greatly improved El Niño forecasts, and which provides data used by NOAA for its seasonal hurricane outlook and by the National Weather Service to help form long-range forecasts and provide advance weather warnings. A world-renowned climate scientist and program Director of IDSC Earth Systems, Kirtman is also the Director of the Cooperative Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS)—a NOAA Center of Excellence—a position with a term of five years that has been renewed twice. Globally, Kirtman has enjoyed a leadership role in the World Climate Research Program’s (WCRP) seasonal to-interannual prediction activities, chaired the International Climate and Ocean Variability Predictability and Change (CLIVAR) Working Group on Seasonal to Interannual Prediction, and served on the WCRP Task Force for Seasonal Prediction. He also served on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Working Group One—the Scientific Basis.

An in-demand speaker and a popular teacher at the Rosenstiel School in the Atmospheric Sciences Department, Kirtman teaches dynamic meteorology and atmospheric thermodynamics to undergraduates, and he mentors graduate students in the Meteorology and Physical Oceanography graduate program, as well as post-doctoral researchers.