It was the year Southern Europe seared, as a vicious heat wave pushed temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in several countries across the region.
It was the year heavy rains spawned massive floods and landslides throughout southern China, killing scores of people, and the year thousands perished in Bangladesh when powerful Cyclone Sidr battered that impoverished nation.
And it was the year an innovative scientist and researcher, who employed mathematics to push the limits of climate predictability from days to decades, arrived at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science as a full professor of meteorology and physical oceanography.
Ben Kirtman hit the ground running as a newcomer to the school in 2007, taking a pioneering approach to address weather and climate conundrums—such as creating a model capable of producing accurate, long-range forecasts for a multitude of weather events weeks in advance.
Now, 18 years after his arrival, Kirtman will take the reins of one of the world's top centers for global earth science research and education when he becomes the Rosenstiel School's new dean on August 1.
He succeeds Roni Avissar, an internationally recognized atmospheric scientist who has served in that post since 2009.
Kirtman will lead a school comprising five academic departments—from atmospheric sciences, his field of specialty, to marine biology and ecology, environmental science and policy, marine geosciences, and ocean sciences. It is a school that includes a 75-foot-long wind-wave tank capable of simulating Category 5 hurricane conditions. It also operates a 78-acre satellite reception and analysis center in southern Miami-Dade County, and its impact extends far beyond its Virginia Key campus, as it runs an aerosol monitoring station on the island nation of Barbados.
Research on tropical cyclones, coral reefs, climate variability, ocean dynamics, and sharks are among the school's signature programs. And its research is spread in so many other areas, spanning just about every aspect of the Earth sciences imaginable.
And that's what has Kirtman ecstatic about his new post. "This is a great time to push the Rosenstiel School to new heights," he said. "It is a particularly challenging time, so expanding on our greatness is going to take some serious innovation."
Vital importance
With Atlantic hurricane seasons becoming more intense, wildfires destroying tens of thousands of acres every year, and deadly floods such as the one in Texas where more than 120 are confirmed dead, "the importance of the Rosenstiel School and the research it conducts in helping to mitigate such environmental challenges couldn't be overstated," Kirtman said.
"The floods in Texas are an example of how challenging environmental problems can be," he explained. "It's much harder than rocket science, and we have a long way to go in creating better forecasts and being able to issue warnings with longer lead times and having the language in our warnings that compel people to act for their own personal safety. So, there's the science angle but also a social science perspective. And all of that is integrated into everything Rosenstiel does."
Kirtman, said Guillermo "Willy" Prado, the University's interim executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, is the right person to lead the school in taking on such challenges.
"He's been one of our academic superstars since day one," Prado said. "Through his extensive research, he's done an exceptional job of setting an agenda and a vision and seeing it through. And particularly during these times, he understands research and priorities. He's a decision-maker and very well respected, not only among the faculty and students, but also among the staff. He has the gift needed to succeed as dean of the Rosenstiel School."
Storied achievements
Kirtman's many accomplishments run the gamut. As a topflight researcher, he combined the resources of the Rosenstiel School with entities like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to create a forecast model capable of predicting environmental hazards up to 30 days out. The Subseasonal Experiment, or SubX, proved remarkably accurate, forecasting the severe cold wave that hit the midwestern United States and eastern Canada in early 2019; the Fourth of July heat wave that enveloped Alaska later that year; and the extreme rainfall from Tropical Storm Isaias that drenched the Caribbean and U.S. East Coast in the summer of 2020.
SubX also forecasted nearly a month in advance the collapse in 2021 of the Arctic polar vortex that brought freezing temperatures, snow, and ice to many parts of the U.S.
Kirtman also serves as director of the Rosenstiel School's NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS), which brings together the research and educational resources of 10 partner universities to provide research opportunities, educational training, and outreach to students and postdoctoral scientists involved in NOAA-funded research.
Under Kirtman's leadership, the University received renewed federal funding five years ago to host CIMAS. The award of up to $310 million over the course of five years comes with the potential for renewal for another five years based on successful performance.
In addition, Kirtman is deputy director of the University's Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC), where he is director of its Earth Systems Science program.
In 2023 he was named the inaugural William R. Middelthon III Endowed Chair of Earth Sciences, one of the 112 new endowed positions, called Centennial Talents, created as part of the University's successful Ever Brighter campaign. The endowed chair supports Kirtman's research on disaster preparedness and climate variability.
Kirtman is the recipient of a trio of grants totaling more than $3 million from the National Science Foundation and NOAA that are allowing him to collaborate with Rosenstiel School colleagues and former students across the country to improve prediction tools for extreme weather and climate events.
He was elected as a fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2018 and in 2023 as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Groundbreaking research
Kirtman earned his bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the University of California San Diego, followed by master's and doctoral degrees in meteorology and physical oceanography from the University of Maryland College Park.
But one might say he cut his teeth in the field of atmospheric sciences in, of all places, the basement of his Southern California home.
During the 1982-1983 El Niño—a climate pattern associated with warmer-than-normal waters in the Pacific Ocean along the equator that drives wet and stormy weather in some parts of the world—the basement of his Santa Barbara home would flood during a heavy downpour.
Kirtman had to operate a pump to keep the room from "turning into a makeshift swimming pool," he recalled. "There were so many times when that pump seemed on the verge of breaking down." So, he had to babysit it, sleeping in the family room next to the basement and setting an alarm to go off every half hour to wake up and turn the pump on or off.
Those basement-flooding and pump-sitting days were life-changing, igniting Kirtman's interest in and fueling his fascination with weather and climate.
Forecasting and the study of atmospheric science, he said, has advanced immensely since his youth.
"When that was happening, many people, including some in the scientific community, didn't believe there was an El Niño. But since that time, we've dramatically changed in our ability to understand how the climate system has evolved and in terms of our ability to predict El Niño," Kirtman said. "When I started out, the best prediction we could make for El Niño was, 'Tomorrow's going to be a lot like today.' Now, we can predict when El Niño is going to come months in advance."
The accuracy of hurricane tracks has also come a long way, "becoming more tightly focused for landfalls," Kirtman explained. "And that's an amazing accomplishment when you consider that somewhere between $10 million and $100 million for every mile of coastline is saved when you narrow down that forecast. That doesn't mean we don't have a lot more to accomplish. Why hurricanes rapidly intensify remains a big question to answer, and there are still questions about El Niño predictability that we fully don't understand. So there's a lot of work for us to do."
Kirtman will continue his groundbreaking research even during his deanship. "We're on the cusp of becoming the premier institution for experiential learning and authentic research classroom experiences," he said. "So I'm going to continue to mentor graduate students and postdocs and keep a robust research portfolio alive."
He also plans to solidify Rosenstiel School's existing partnerships with other schools and colleges and build new collaborations. "We have a great partnership with the College of Engineering, and I'd like our collaboration with IDSC to continue to flourish," Kirtman said. "I expect we're going to have some great collaborations with the Climate Resilience Institute going forward, and I can see the School of Architecture and Herbert Business School well positioned to start interacting with us more on critical issues.
"Indeed," he added, "we're well positioned to expand on our greatness."
