James P. Kossin, Ph.D.

Independent Climate Science and Risk Consultant / Contractor
Madison, Wisconsin USA

Adjunct Professor
Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Climate and Atmospheric Scientist (retired)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
US Department of Commerce

Principal Investigator (Emeritus Fellow)
Space Science and Engineering Center
University of Wisconsin-Madison


Publications are listed here
and via Google Scholar here.



Dr. James Kossin is an independent consultant specializing in climate risk and extreme weather events. He is presently working with First Street Foundation, a non-profit that provides climate risk analytics. He was a Senior Scientist with The Climate Service, Inc., and prior to that he worked for 13 years within the Climate Science Division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He also serves as adjunct faculty in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and as an Honorary Research Fellow in the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.

Much of Dr. Kossin’s research has focused on extreme storms, in particular tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons), and their relationships with climate variability and climate change. At The Climate Service, Inc., he worked in a broad variety of areas including drought, flood, and wildfire, and forming probabilistic 21st century projections of these extremes. He collaborates with professionals across a range of disciplines, and actively publishes in a broad range of peer-reviewed journals, including Nature, Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Lancet, and The New England Journal of Medicine. His papers have been widely discussed in the media, and two of his papers have been included in CarbonBrief's top climate papers for news and social media attention.

Dr. Kossin was a Lead Author on the 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and served as a Lead Author on the 2013 IPCC AR5 and 2012 IPCC Special Report on Extremes (SREX). He was the Chapter Lead Author on the Extreme Storms chapter of the 2017 Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA4) and a Lead Author on the 2014 U.S. NCA3 and 2008 CCSP reports. He is a Member Emeritus of the United Nations World Meteorology Organization (WMO) Expert Team on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change, and a member of the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) Working Groups on Hurricanes and Climate, and the Changing Width of the Tropical Belt. He was an Editor on the annually recurring special issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society's Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspective.

As a U.S. federal scientist within NOAA, Dr. Kossin was awarded the 2011 US Department of Commerce Gold Medal, the 2022 Department of Commerce Silver Medal, and the 2014 NOAA Administrator’s Award for his contributions to the International and National Climate Assessment Report process. As a Lead Author of the IPCC AR6, he was a co-recipient of the 2022 Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity. He received the NOAA Bronze Medal Award for his work with the U.S. National Hurricane Center, and the 2021 NOAA Administrator's Award for the scope and impacts of his research on tropical cyclones over his career.

Dr. Kossin earned his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, and his B.S. in Mathematics and Physics and M.S. in Mathematics at Clarkson University in New York.

Outside of his scientific interests, he worked as a professional rock climbing guide, a professional whitewater kayaking guide, and on the U.S. National Ski Patrol during his time in Colorado.