Kerry Emanuel is arguably the world’s foremost expert on tropical cyclones. A weather weenie already at a very early age, Kerry earned his Ph.D. at MIT in lightning speed (working with the legendary Jule Charney) and started teaching as an assistant professor at UCLA at the tender age of 23.

Since then, Kerry has made seminal contributions to the understanding of atmospheric convection and the physics of hurricanes. He has been a professor at MIT since 1981, after spending three years on the faculty of UCLA. His fascination with hurricanes began in the 1980s, when he was asked to teach a course on tropical meteorology and was reading through a lot of material in preparation for it:

When you teach something for the first time, it’s a terrific experience of becoming acquainted with the level of your ignorance of the subject. You think you might know it. And then you start putting together notes, and imagine standing in front of a group talking about it – it focuses your mind.

His preparation led Kerry to realize that the existing theory of hurricanes was partly wrong – and for Kerry, this was the starting point for decades of research into finding out what’s right. In doing so, he also discovered that scientists in the 1950s had already had a more accurate theory of how hurricanes sustain their intensity, but the predominant theory in the 1980s seemed to completely ignore the existence of that previous body of research – a historical conundrum that mystifies Kerry to this day.

Kerry also talks about how he used to be skeptical – in the true, positive sense – of the human role in climate change, and how the evidence eventually convinced him.

“I think scientists in general are most effective when they do their science, and they can communicate it to people who are in positions to make decisions […] on the basis of the science. And not get involved in the politics of it because that tends to taint one’s credibility. […] But what you can do is try to counter the deleterious effect of disinformation. And I felt an obligation to do that. And I felt well positioned because I wasn’t an alarmist, I didn’t have a previous record of shouting that the sky is falling down.

You’ll also hear Kerry speak on the importance of nuclear technology in addressing climate change, the Epstein funding scandal at MIT – and on an encounter with the Tea Party in Las Vegas.

The interview with Kerry Emanuel was recorded in October 2019. Image credit: BBVA Foundation

• Kerry’s website with links to all his books and papers, videos, and much more