Oceanography Professor Isaac Ginis is considered one of the most accurate hurricane forecasters in the world.
Improving preparedness for the next big storm
The first time Isaac Ginis visited the United States from his native Russia to present a paper at a meteorological conference, he was the only speaker on the ocean’s role in hurricane formation. His talk was also relegated to the last day of the meeting because his research was considered unimportant.
That’s no longer the case. Sixteen years later that same conference devotes three full days and dozens of speakers to the subject every other year. And Ginis, like the mythological Neptune, is treated like a king.
Now a professor at URI’s renowned Graduate School of Oceanography, Ginis looks back on that first conference with considerable satisfaction. “There has been a huge change since I first introduced this topic at that conference,” Ginis said. “Until then, most of what was known in the U.S. about air-sea interaction during storms was learned when a hurricane would happen to pass over a buoy that was collecting oceanographic data.”
But the Soviet Union had already made enormous investments in research on the topic using ships traveling through typhoons in the Pacific Ocean to collect data. “It’s an interesting coincidence that my first research grant in Russia came from the Russian Navy and my first grant in the U.S. came from the U.S. Navy,” he said with a grin, recognizing the irony of how the military of two Cold War enemies both funded his research.
Today, Ginis is considered one of the most accurate hurricane forecasters in the world and was recognized in 2002 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with its Environmental Hero Award. He is the first scientist in the U.S. to demonstrate the significant role the ocean plays in the formation, path, and intensity of hurricanes. Using data collected from aircraft, satellites, and ocean buoys, his models helped to significantly improve hurricane predictions in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico in the last five years.
“The most important factor in forecasting hurricanes is water temperature,” he said. “Hurricanes develop because of the heat from the ocean, which is why they only develop in the summer and die out once they hit land or move north over colder water.”
Hurricane force winds create ocean currents that cause a mixing of warm surface waters and cooler subsurface waters, leaving a wake of cool water at the surface behind. This cool wake plays an important role in moderating the intensity of hurricanes. This discovery is Ginis’ major contribution to the field of hurricane forecasting, and his ocean model is the only one used by the National Weather Service to predict hurricane intensity.
The coupling of Ginis’ ocean model with an atmospheric model created by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton has made it the most accurate model used by the National Weather Service since 2001. And each year he and his colleagues make improvements to the model based on new information learned from examining the boundary between the air and ocean.
Ginis and URI colleague Lew Rothstein are working to make Rhode Island a major center of hurricane and meteorological research. They have submitted a proposal to NOAA to establish a research institute for modeling and forecasting the ocean and atmosphere, and they are “cautiously optimistic” it will get approved later this year.
“Part of the focus of the institute is to improve hurricane predictions for the nation,” Ginis said. “But it’s not just about hurricanes. It’s also about improving weather forecasting in New England. There are unique challenges in forecasting the weather in New England, yet no one is studying it.”
In addition to examining the weather patterns specific to the Northeast, the URI scientists also hope the NOAA institute will allow them to localize climate change forecasts for New England to learn what warming temperatures will mean to the region.
Ultimately, Ginis’ hurricane research is designed to save lives, protect property, and save money. “For every mile of coastline, it costs $1 million to prepare for an approaching hurricane,” he said. “Our job is to accurately predict the path and intensity of a storm and narrow down the area that needs to spend the money to prepare for the storm. Our predictions have significant implications up and down the coast.”
Because many companies are worried about how a major storm may affect their operations, Ginis and Rothstein have also formed a company to help businesses—especially insurance companies—assess their risks from weather phenomenon. They employ five full-time staff members to provide scientific support and risk assessments to companies in Europe, Bermuda, and the U.S.
A soft-spoken and thoughtful man, Ginis moved to the U.S. with his wife, Irina, and three sons in 1990. “When you move from one town to another town, it’s always difficult,” he said. “It’s even more challenging moving from one economic and political system to another. But we adjusted quickly and received our citizenship in 1995.”
After a brief stop at Princeton University, Ginis accepted a faculty position at URI in 1993, a move he calls “one of the best decisions I have made in my career.”
Despite his major scientific accomplishments, Ginis said he is most proud of his sons. His oldest, Roman, graduated from URI in 1997, later earned a Ph.D. at Cal Tech, and now is a manager at a large computer company where he conducts research for the defense department. Twin sons Edward and Mark earned computer science degrees in 2005 from UCLA and URI, respectively. Edward is the vice president for information technology for Concord Music in Los Angeles, and Mark started his own business remodeling homes.
Though Ginis has little time for relaxation during the six-month hurricane season, he still manages to find time for reading—“I’m a news junky,” he said—and traveling, especially to Europe and the American West.
One subject the news junky has followed closely is the ongoing debate about why hurricanes have increased in number and intensity in recent years. Some experts say it’s a direct result of human-caused global warming, while others suggest it’s simply part of a natural cycle. While Ginis is hesitant to dive head first into the debate, he has clearly given it considerable thought.
“There’s no question that sea surface temperatures are rising, likely due to global warming,” said the URI professor who is spending the fall 2006 semester as a visiting professor at Princeton, “but we still don’t know how that affects hurricanes. Theoretically, hurricane intensity should increase as sea temperatures increase. But it’s also possible that the atmosphere may become more stable from global warming, and that may modulate the intensity of storms. We just can’t say for sure yet.”
The difficulty, Ginis said, is that the quality of hurricane data has changed significantly over the years, so making accurate comparisons of historic hurricane frequency and intensity with present-day data is challenging.
“You can’t really trust the data before modern satellites came into use because the satellites can identify more storms, and their ability to measure intensity is greater,” he said.
The incredible devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 caused Ginis and other hurricane scientists to take a much closer look at why those storms intensified to category 5. What they learned is that the northward extension of the Loop Current, which separates the waters of the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea, was the most likely reason that Katrina and Rita intensified so much.
“At the surface, the water temperatures in the Gulf and Caribbean are quite similar,” explained Ginis, “but the warm surface layer extends much deeper in the Caribbean than in the Gulf, which is why category 5 hurricanes are much more common in the Caribbean.”
When the Loop Current extends northward into the Gulf of Mexico, as it does in a regular cycle every nine months or so, the deep warm waters of the Caribbean go with it, according to Ginis. When a hurricane tracks along that northward extension—as Katrina and Rita did—it can intensify considerably.
“Katrina and Rita were the perfect storms because they occurred during this convergence of atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon,” Ginis said. “And they also intensified to category 5 storms at the same place in the Gulf. That’s more than just a coincidence. “
Ginis’ improved model for 2006 is the first to incorporate the position of the Loop Current when forecasting hurricane intensity. And while he continues to make additional improvements each year, he is also preparing to retire the model in favor of a new one he and his colleagues are now fine-tuning.
It’s another important step in making residents of our wind-ravaged coastlines safer and better prepared for the next big storm.
By Todd McLeishPhoto by Nora Lewis
