Joanne Muller, Ph.D.
Expert in hurricanes and climate change Florida Gulf Coast University
- Fort Myers FL
Joanne Muller is an expert in the impact of climate change in tropical and sub-tropical areas.
Florida Gulf Coast University
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Media
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Education
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Sir Keith Murdoch and Comer Postdoctoral Fellow
2009
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University
Ph.D. Research Student and Tutor in Marine Science
2007
James Cook University, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Ph.D.
2007
James Cook University, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences
B.Sc. (Honors)
2003
University of Technology
B.Sc.
Earth Sciences
2002
Affiliations
- Geological Society of America
- American Association of Geographers
- American Geophysical Union
- American Metereological Society
Selected Media Appearances
Paleoclimatologists seek clues about hurricanes in ocean sediment as Florida rebuilds after Ian
WBUR radio
2023-02-22
Joanne Muller shows how she and her students are coring in Estero Bay to look for sediment left by Hurricane Ian.
Subtle shifts in Gulf Stream activity could lead to stronger hurricanes
ABC7 tv
2022-03-19
Joanne Muller discusses climate change and the Gulf Stream.
Southwest Florida is overdue for devastating storm surge
Fox 4 tv
2022-02-11
Joanne Muller discusses hurricanes and storm surge.
Is climate change in Southwest Florida to blame for one storm spawning seven tornadoes?
Is climate change in Southwest Florida to blame for one storm spawning seven tornadoes? radio
2022-01-17
Joanne Muller explains the correlation between tornadoes and climate change.
Climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous, scientists say
NBC2 tv
2020-09-17
Joanne Muller explains why a warming climate is making hurricanes more dangerous.
Future hurricanes may be more powerful, scientists warn
NBC2 tv
2019-09-04
Joanne Muller expects hurricane intensity to increase.
Florida hurricanes predicted by scientist with unique technique
Fox News tv
2019-08-20
Joanne Muller discusses her coring technique with Fox News.
This scientist is digging into the history of Florida’s hurricanes
New York Post online
2019-08-20
Joanne Muller discusses her coring technique.
The U.S. saw record flooding last year - could SWFL also be impacted?
NBC2 tv
2019-07-17
Joanne Muller discusses "sunny day" flooding.
Combination of storm surge, high tide an issue for SWFL coast
ABC 7 tv
2018-10-09
Joanne Muller is quoted talking about the impact of Hurricane Michael on the Southwest Florida coastline.
Sinking Cities: Miami
PBS tv
2018-11-21
Joanne Muller is interviewed about the impacts of climate change on Miami's beachfront.
Local efforts modest in dealing with a warming planet
Charlotte County Florida Weekly print
2015-02-12
Joanne Muller talks about her research into the past climate change in tropical latitudes.
Selected Event Appearances
Using the geologic record to determine long-term trends in hurricane landfalls along the west Florida coastline
5th International Summit on Hurricanes and Climate Change, Chania, Greece, 2015
Intense Southwest Florida Hurricane Strikes over the Past 1,000 Years, (C06-P26)
XIX International Union for Quaternary Research, Nagoya, Japan, 2015
Selected Research Grants
MCA Pilot PUI: Validating and Constraining Catastrophe Models with Paleo Tropical Cyclone Data for Enhanced Risk Management
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences
2023 - 2026
Muller, J.
NSF RAPID: Understanding Hurricane Ian's Storm Surge Inundation and Sediment Transport in Order to Advance the Field of Paleotempestology
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences
2023 - 2024
Muller, J.
A Multi-step Method for Extending the Hurricane Record Back in Time to Obtain More Representative Return Period Calculations for East Florida Communities
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
2018 - 2020
Muller, J., and Collins, J.
Reconstructing the History of Hurricane Landfalls in Southwest Florida over the Past 5,000 Years
National Science Foundation – Marine Geology and Geophysics Program
2013 - 2015
Muller, J., and Collins, J.
Past Dynamics of the Indonesian Throughflow
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Tropical Research Initiative
2008 - 2010
McManus, J.F., Muller, J., and Toole, J.
Selected Articles
Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900–2022
American Meteorological Society JournalsJoanne Muller, Kaylee Mooney, Steven G. Bowen, Philip J. Klotzbach, Tynisha Martin, Tom J. Philp, Bhatt Dhruvkumar, Richard S. Dixon, and Senthil B. Girimurugan
2025-01-13
Since 1900, landfalling hurricanes have been the costliest of all weather-related disasters to afflict the contiguous United States. To provide a present-day (2022) reevaluation of this risk, this study employs an improved normalization approach to better understand potential economic event losses in the context of contemporary societal conditions. The updated methodology identifies impacted coastal counties using the newly available radius of maximum winds at landfall. Hurricane Katrina is the most expensive hurricane since 1900, with a likely 2022 normalized cost of $234 billion. Combined losses from the 50 most expensive hurricane events are ∼ $2.9 trillion in normalized economic losses. The study also explores some “analog storms” where comparisons can be made between two historic storms with similar landfall locations. For example, category 5 Andrew (1992) has lower 2022 normalized losses than category 4 Great Miami (1926), at $125 billion versus $178 billion, most likely due to the significantly different radius of maximum wind size (10 vs 20 n mi; 1 n mi = 1.852 km). As with previous studies, we conclude that increases in inflation, coastal population, regional wealth, and higher replacement costs remain the primary drivers of observed increases in hurricane-related damage. These upsurges are especially impactful for some coastal regions along the U.S. Gulf and Southeast Coasts that have seen exceptionally high rates of population/housing growth in comparison to countrywide growth. Exposure growth trends are likely to continue in the future and, independent of any influence of climate change on tropical cyclone behavior, are expected to result in greater hurricane-related damage costs than have been previously observed.
Multi-proxy characterization of storm deposits on Sanibel Island, Florida: A modern analog for paleotempestology
GeomorphologyJoanne Muller, Christian Ercolani, Jennifer Collins, Shelby Ellis
2022
Hurricanes have serious impacts on human lives and infrastructure, especially as a result of flooding caused by storm surge and precipitation. To better prepare coastal populations for future hurricanes due to an increasingly warming world, a better understanding of hurricane storm surge is key. Southwest Florida is particularly vulnerable to hurricane storm surge where most of the coastline is within 2.5 m of sea level and population is on the rise (2.5% between 2019 and 2020 in Lee County). This study presents a geologic record of intense hurricane strikes from Sanibel Island dating back to approximately ca. 1920.
Accumulated Cyclone Energy-Based Tropical Cyclone Return Periods in Florida
Annals of the American Association of GeographersJennifer Collins, Joanne Muller & Philip Klotzbach
2022
This article introduces an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) approach for estimating the return period of tropical cyclone (TC) wind risk in Florida. As opposed to calculating return periods directly from maximum sustained wind speed, the ACE-based approach also describes the duration of the strong winds, giving an additional dimension to the assessment of TC wind risks. Because Florida is a peninsula, TCs can move across the state within six hours of landfall, causing an underestimation of the inland wind footprint if only the six-hour reanalysis track points are employed as an input data source. This study uses four different scenarios and an inland exponential decay function to interpolate the wind speed between the six-hour reanalysis track points to feed the ACE-based return period calculation based on a 121-year record from 1900 to 2020.
The geologic record of Hurricane Irma in a Southwest Florida back-barrier lagoon
Marine GeologyTynisha Martin, Joanne Muller
2021
On 10 September 2017, Category 3 Hurricane Irma made landfall along the Southwest Florida coastline between Cape Sable and Cape Romano. Geologic evidence of this storm is preserved in a back-barrier lagoon behind the Big Hickory Barrier Island, which is located ~64 km north of the landfall point and is positioned 43–65 m east of the Gulf of Mexico. Modern dune height is ~0.83–0.88 m, which was exceeded by the storm surge (recorded height 0.9–1.5 m) allowing for sediment deposition in the Big Hickory Island Lagoon. Geologic evidence is likely found at this location due to proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the shallow barrier itself. Three cores were analyzed for moisture, inorganic content, grain size, and foraminiferal assemblages.
Recent Advances in the Emerging Field of Paleotempestology
Hurricanes and Climate ChangeJoanne Muller, Jennifer M Collins, Samantha Gibson, Leilani Paxton
2017
Roughly 35 % of the world’s 7.4 billion people are in the path of tropical cyclones, and coastal populations are expected to increase in the coming century. To understand the future damage that tropical cyclones could impose on an ever-growing coastal population, it is critically important to better understand the relationships between tropical cyclones and climate. Large-scale features of the climate system have been shown to affect tropical cyclone activity, for example, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has been shown to influence tropical cyclone frequency in all oceanic basins on seasonal, yearly, and decadal timescales. However, the relatively short observational record (
Intense Southwest Florida Hurricane Landfalls Over the Past 1,000 Years
Quaternary Science ReviewsErcolani, C., Muller, J., Collins, J., Savarese, M. Squiccimara, L.
2015
Recent research has proposed that human-induced sea surface temperature (SST) warming has led to an increase in the intensity of hurricanes over the past 30 years. However, this notion has been challenged on the basis that the instrumental record is too short and unreliable to reveal long-term trends in hurricane activity. This study addresses this limitation by investigating hurricane-induced overwash deposits (paleotempestites) behind a barrier island in Naples, FL, USA. Paleotempestologic proxies including grain size, percent calcium carbonate, and fossil shells species were used to distinguish overwash events in two sediment cores spanning the last one thousand years. Two prominent paleotempestites were observed in the top 20 cm of both cores: the first identified as Hurricane Donna in 1960 whereas an older paleotempestite (1900–1930) could represent one of three documented storms in the early 1900s. An active period of hurricane overwash from 1000 to 500 yrs. BP and an inactive period from 500 to 150 yrs. BP correlate with reconstructed SSTs from the Main Development Region (MDR) of the North Atlantic Ocean. We observe an increased number of paleotempestites when MDR SSTs are warmer, coinciding with the Medieval Warm Period, and very few paleotempestites when MDR SSTs are cooler, coinciding with the Little Ice Age. Results from this initial Southwest Florida study indicate that MDR SSTs have been a key long-term climate driver of intense Southwest Florida hurricane strikes.
Strengthening of the North-East Monsoon over the Flores Sea, Indonesia, at the time of Heinrich Event 1
GeologyMuller, J., McManus, J.F., Oppo, D., Francois, R., Brown-Ledger, S.
2012
Paleoclimate evidence from South America and Asia has been interpreted to indicate that tropical rainfall migrated southward during the Northern Hemisphere cooling associated with Heinrich stadial 1 (HS1), an event of massive iceberg discharge to the North Atlantic ca. 18–15 ka. Although arid conditions associated with such a shift are well documented in southern Asia, as far south as Borneo, debate still exists regarding the precipitation response in southern Indonesia and Australia during HS1. This study utilizes concentrations of the long-lived nuclide 232Th as a proxy for detrital riverine input and 230Th normalization to estimate the history of preserved fluxes reaching the seafloor in the Flores Sea, located between southern Sulawesi and the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. Because the only source of 232Th to the ocean is continental minerals, this proxy is a robust indicator of continental weathering. The 230Th normalized burial fluxes of lithogenic and biogenic matter demonstrate that both detrital and biogenic fluxes in the Flores Sea were higher during HS1 than any other period in the past 22 k.y. High detrital fluxes indicate enhanced precipitation runoff from surrounding landmasses during a period of maximum southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This study further constrains the northern limit of enhanced rainfall associated with a southward shift of Australian monsoon-related rainfall at the time of HS1 and highlights the value of 232Th as a proxy of continental input to deep-sea sediment records.
