Dr. Yoshio Kurihara's contribution to modeling, the GFDL hurricane model and its place in the current FSU multimodel superensemble

This talk will enumerate the great contributions on hurricane and atmospheric science by Dr. Yoshio Kurihara. His studies cover a wide range of areas on numerical method, intricacies of hurricane modeling and lifting the GFDL hurricane model to the forefront for hurricane forecasts. Dr. Kurihara is well remembered for his personal qualities, dedication to science and collegiality, those were parts of his career as we remember him. This talk will carry those attributes citing his scientific publication in the area of numerical methods (prior to 1974), the hurricane thrust and global warming impacts through the rest of his career. The annual performance of the GFDL model that placed it among the best in the NHC suite of operational models was a landmark of his career. Our experiences with the multimodel superensemble provided us with a unique opportunity to compare the varied forecast performances of the member models of the NHC hurricane suite. This talk will include a synopsis of the FSU multimodel suite from their recent years (2004-2007) performances and acknowledge the importance of Dr. Kurihara's contributions.