(p. 24) William M. Gray, whose pioneering research helped him make hurricane predictions for three decades and allowed the East Coast and the Caribbean to gird for their fury, died on Saturday [April 23, 2016] in Fort Collins, Colo. He was 86.
. . .
Dr. Gray issued his first data-driven seasonal forecast in 1984. He eventually aggregated measures of atmospheric conditions, water current and water temperature to predict the number and intensity of tropical storms, rather than their paths or potential landfalls.
. . .
Dr. Gray was skeptical about the causes of climate change, prompting vitriolic exchanges with other scientists. Judith A. Curry, who was chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, accused him of “brain fossilization.”
Dr. Gray was less alarmed than many of his colleagues at the rate of climate change and attributed it to natural causes, like the circulation of heat-bearing ocean currents, rather than to the human-made greenhouse effect of heat-trapping gasses from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil.
“After unveiling the first Atlantic seasonal hurricane forecasting system in 1984, he became a hurricane superstar and darling of the media,” Chris Mooney wrote in 2007 in “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.” “But he had absolutely no use for the notion of global warming, much less the idea that it might seriously affect the storms he’d spent a lifetime studying. And he had no problem saying so — loudly and often.”
In an interview with Westword, a Denver online newsletter, in 2006, Dr. Gray said, “When I am pushing up daisies, I am very sure that we will find that humans have warmed the globe slightly, but that it’s nothing like what they’re saying.”
For the full obituary, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “William M. Gray, 86, a Predictor of Hurricanes’ Fury.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., APRIL 24, 2016): 24.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date APRIL 20 [sic], 2016, and has the title “William M. Gray, Hurricane Predictor and Climate Change Skeptic, Dies at 86.”)
The book by Mooney, mentioned above, is:
Mooney, Chris. Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming. Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007.