JAMES FRANKLIN is the former chief of the Hurricane forecasting branch at the National Hurricane Center and one the nation's leading hurricane meteorologists. He flew more than 80 missions into hurricane eye walls.
Franklin received more than a dozen awards during his NOAA career,
including the National Weather Service’s Isaac Cline award and the American
Meteorological Society (AMS) Editors Award. He was twice chosen for the
AMS Banner I. Miller award and was awarded the Department of Commerce
Gold Medal on three occasions - for improvements to the accuracy of
hurricane analyses through innovative application of GPS dropsonde data, for
leading NOAA’s operational use of the QuikSCAT satellite, and for his
contributions to advances in hurricane modeling.
He has published more than 20 scientific articles on hurricane motion, inner-core structure, forecasting, and meteorological instrumentation.