Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences
17 Biological Lane
St. George's GE 01
Bermuda
Tel: 1-443-622-6484
Fax: 1-301-942-1886
E-mail: rick.murnane@bios.edu



Specialization:
Climatology, Tropical Meteorology, Geochemistry

Profile:
As Program Manager for BIOS's Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI), Dr. Murnane oversees the RPI research program, organizes science-business workshops on topics of interest to RPI sponsors, and works to make science understandable, available and useable. Dr. Murnane's current research focuses on tropical cyclones and the impact of climate variability on tropical cyclone activity with a particular emphasis on landfall probability. Before joining RPI in 1997, Dr. Murnane was on the research staff of Princeton University in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. While at Princeton, he developed general circulation models of the global ocean carbon cycle and inverse models for analyzing the rates of ocean particle interactions. Dr. Murnane received a Ph.D. in geological and geophysical sciences from Princeton University in 1988 and a Bachelor's in chemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1979.

Current Research: 

• Tropical cyclone landfall probability conditioned on climate variability.
• Analyzing tropical cyclone windfields using satellite observations.
• Hazard and vulnerability components of catastrophe risk models.

Educational Background: 

• B.A. Chemistry (Honors), Stevenson College, U.C. Santa Cruz, 1979
• M.A. Geological and Geophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 1984
• Ph.D. Geological and Geophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 1988

Selected Publications:

• Kossin, J. P., K. R. Knapp, D. J. Vimont, R. J. Murnane, and B. A. Harper, A globally consistent reanalysis of hurricane trends, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L04815, doi:10.1029/2006GL028836, 2007.
• Murnane, R. J., Developing risk models for wildfires in the Wildland-Urban Interface in the western United States, Natural Hazards Review, 7, 150-156, 2006.
• Elsner, J. B., R. J. Murnane, T. H. Jagger, Forecasting U.S. hurricanes 6 months in advance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, 10.1029/2006GL025693, 2006.