Education
Colorado State University.
Colorado State University.
Landsea earned his doctoral degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. In January, 2005, Landsea withdrew from his participation in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, criticizing it for using "a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound." Landsea claimed the IPCC had become politicized and the leadership ignored his concerns. Landsea does not believe that global warming has a strong influence on hurricanes: "global warming might be enhancing hurricane winds, but only by 1 percent or 2 percent".
According to Salon magazine, Bush administration personnel chose Landsea over another scientist at National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to speak to the media about the link between hurricanes and climate change after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.
In an interview on Public Broadcasting Service, Christopher Landsea said "we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit, and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming. The question is whether we"re seeing any real increases in the hurricane activity." He went on to say "with the Atlantic hurricanes in particular, they"re due to changes both in the ocean as well as the atmosphere.
Just changing the ocean where it"s a little bit warmer isn"t sufficient." As for climate change affecting hurricane strength, Landsea said that global warming theories and numerical modeling suggest only that "hurricanes like Katrina and Rita may have been stronger due to global warming but maybe by one or two miles per hour.".
He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.