Dr. William Gray

     Dr. William Gray was born October 9, 1929 and moved to Washington D.C. in 1939 where he attended Wilson High School and George Washington University. At GWU he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology. During high school and college he had originally dreamed to become a professional baseball player but received an injury that curbed his dream. Shortly after his graduation from GWU he joined the Air Force in 1953 where he served as a weather forecaster for four years and he would remain in the Air Force until 1974 when he retired as a Lt. Col.
     After his active duty ended in the Air Force Dr. Gray would go on to earn a Masters degree in Meteorology and a Ph.D in Geophysical Sciences in the University of Chicago. Later in 1961, he would join the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. At CSU he would be an esteemed professor there and head the Tropical Meteorology Project. He would teach 70 Masters and Ph.D students, many of them becoming leaders in the field of Tropical Meteorology. Most notably among these students was Philip Klotzbach, who would take over both the responsibility of heading the Tropical Meteorology Project and authoring the seasonal hurricane forecasts after Dr. Gray's retirement.
     Later in his life, Dr. Gray became a vocal opponent of Anthropogenic Climate Change, making him a very controversial figure in the topic. Dr. Gray would pass away on April 16, 2016. An obituary was written by Philip Klotzbach and the Tropical Meteorology Project would post one to their website.
     Dr. Gray was most known for two things: his pioneering of hurricane forecasting and his controversial stance on climate change.
     Dr. Gray's first forecast was in 1984. What made his hurricane forecast so important was that he formed it from several sources of data such as atmospheric conditions, water temperature and water current. His forecast emphasized predicting the intensity and number of storms rather than their path and whether or not they would make landfall. His model of forecasting has been used for over 30 years. He asserted that the frequency and intensity of tropical storms in the North Atlantic occurred in a cycle, pointing to six main factors that caused it. The two most important factors were the impact of the El Nino and the amount of rainfall in the African Sahel.
     As previously stated Dr. Gray was a controversial figure in the topic of climate change. He was a skeptic of human-induced climate change, and took a vocal stance against it. He would be a speaker st the Heartland Institute's International Conference for Climate Change in July 2014 where he would restate his dissent to the idea. Judith A. Curry the chairwoman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology would accuse him of 'brain fossilization'. Dr. Gray did believe in global warming but had attributed it to variation in the global ocean currents caused by a rise of ocean salinity. In an article he wrote for BBC news he would go on to state that humanity had little to nothing to do with the climate changing, stating it was simply a natural occurrence.