The FSU Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science and the College of Arts and Sciences are pleased to announce Adam Sobel, Ph.D., as the 2025-2026 Werner A. Baum lecturer.
Friday, Nov. 14, 2025 at 3 p.m. | EOAS Building, Room 1050
Sobel will present “Tropical cyclone risk and the state of the tropical Pacific,” exploring how tropical cyclone risk is strongly modulated by the state of the tropical Pacific climate. Although Earth system models have simulated long-term trends in sea surface temperature under greenhouse gas warming similar to El Niño, over the past few decades, observations have shown trends more similar to La Niña, approximately opposite to what the models predicted. Sobel will present results from ongoing projects that seek to understand why the models might be wrong and generate “storylines” of near-term climate change, TC activity, and TC hazard and risk more consistent with recent history. This event is free and open to the FSU community, and registration is not required. Questions? Email Allison Wing, Werner A. and Shirley B. Baum Professor, at awing@fsu.edu.
About the lecturer
Adam Sobel, Ph.D. is a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Engineering School. He studies weather and climate with a focus on extreme weather events and a particular interest in the tropics. Sobel’s research spans basic and applied prediction and risk assessment, and uses observations, theory, and numerical simulations with models spanning a hierarchy in complexity.
Sobel earned a B.A. in physics and music from Wesleyan University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998. He received the 2026 Joanne Simpson Tropical Meteorology Award, the 2014 Louis J. Battan Author’s Award, and the Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award all from the American Meteorological Society, of which he became a Fellow in 2020; the 2022 Jule Gregory Charney Lectureship and 2014 Ascent Award from the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union, of which he became a Union Fellow in 2023; and the 2010 LamontDoherty Award for Excellence in Mentoring.