Scientific American
Every 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Had Faster Winds because of Climate Change
Marquee national coverage of my lead-author study: human-caused ocean warming intensified the winds of every 2024 Atlantic hurricane.
Daniel M. Gilford, PhD · Climate Scientist · AI for Science
Discovering and communicating how climate change is reshaping coasts, storms, and lives.
From rigorous science to powerful applications — serving communities, decision-makers, and journalists.
Featured
What I do
A sampling that captures the essence of my work.
Publication
Human-caused sea level rise drives 21st-century worldwide water level extremes
Lead-authored study linking human-caused sea-level rise to worsening worldwide coastal water-level extremes.
In the newsClimate Change Amplified the Winds in Every Hurricane in 2024
Scientific American on the key applied results from our hurricane intensity attribution study.
Open science and toolstcpyPI — Tropical cyclone potential intensity calculations in Python
Open-source, peer-reviewed software to compute the speed limit of storms. This tool is used widely across the field of tropical meteorology.
Research
Topics I study
Tropical cyclones
How a warming ocean and atmosphere are changing the strength of Atlantic hurricanes.
Sea-level rise & coastal risks
How rising seas affect flood risks, damages, and life along our coastlines.
Climate attribution
How we know — quickly and credibly — when climate change shaped an event.
Running throughout: AI & machine learning — in my peer-reviewed methods, and increasingly, in how I work every single day.
In the news
Selected media
A curated set of high-leverage coverage and interviews.
The New York Times — The Morning
The Morning: Hurricane Ian and climate change
Quoted in the Times' flagship morning newsletter on the morning Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida.
Eos (AGU)
The Emotional Toll of Climate Change on Science Professionals
A lead-author feature on the emotional and mental-health dimensions of a career in climate science.
Publications
Selected publications
: Human-caused sea level rise drives 21st-century worldwide water level extremes Science Advances.
Lead Author
Lead-author study connecting human-caused sea-level rise to worsening coastal water-level extremes worldwide — the throughline of my coastal-risk work, in a top journal.
Top 1% of articles
: Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes Environmental Research: Climate.
Lead Author
My signature attribution result: every Atlantic hurricane in recent seasons was made measurably windier by human-caused ocean warming. Widely covered in national and science media.
Top 1% of articles
: The Paris Climate Agreement and Future Sea Level Rise from Antarctica Nature.
AI Method
How meeting (or missing) the Paris targets reshapes sea-level rise from Antarctica — with ice-sheet projections informed by the machine-learning emulator framework from my 2020 study. My most-cited paper, in Nature.
Top 1% of articles
Open science
Tools & code
Sole Author · Developer
Open-source Python package for computing tropical cyclone potential intensity (the theoretical speed limit of hurricanes). Sole-authored, peer-reviewed, and widely used across the field of tropical meteorology.
Sole Developer
An open, continually evolving collection of AI tools and workflows for scientific computing and communication — the Claude-based agent skills and reviewer personas I use in my own published research.
Lead Author
A multi-method framework, and the production pipeline built on it, for quantifying climate change's fingerprint on temperatures, ocean heat, and storms within days of — or even concurrently with — an event.
Lead Author
Reproducible code behind my 2026 study quantifying how human-caused sea-level rise is driving worsening coastal water-level extremes worldwide.
Working on a climate or weather story, study, or event?
I love to talk with journalists, collaborators, and organizations about AI tools, hurricanes, sea-level rise, climate change, attribution, and coastal communities. Reach out — I'm excited to help!
Get in touch