(Bloomberg) -- He changed the way the world looks at hurricanes, and in later years he challenged the science behind climate change, but most people will probably remember Bill Gray as the creator of the modern seasonal forecast for Atlantic storms.
Gray died Saturday at the age of 86. He was professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he had served as a full-time professor from 1961 to 2005.
“There were efforts to look at seasonal predictions all the way back to the 1930s but none of them amounted to much,” said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center’s Technology & Science Branch. “He has shown that there is skill, that you can do better, much more than just flipping a coin or random chance.”
Since Gray developed the system in 1984, the outlooks have become ubiquitous, with commercial forecasters and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration all issuing seasonal predictions for Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane development. Colorado State still does, now under lead author Phil Klotzbach.
Last week, Klotzbach called for 12 named storms, five of which would become hurricanes and two becoming major systems. That’s about an average year for the Atlantic.
Understanding storms
“Most people know him from the seasonal forecast, but there were
contributions about the understanding of hurricanes,” said Eric
Blake, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center.
In 1968, Gray wrote a paper about the genesis of tropical cyclones, the class of storms that includes hurricanes and typhoons. He tied together many of the factors that the storms needed to form and showed that wind shear can damage their structure.
“It’s still a landmark contribution,” said Landsea, who like Blake and Klotzbach studied under Gray. “I think before that paper, parts of it were understood, but it wasn’t put together in a coherent whole. He put it all together and demonstrated it globally. A lot of forecasters around the world changed their methodology.”
Legacy remembered
Blake and Klotzbach remember him fondly. He graduated 70 masters or
Ph.D. students, according to a statement by the university.
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