International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, IEAS

Academician

Michael Ghil

Profile:

Elected Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences on 21 September 2017, Professor Michael Ghil is a distinguished mathematician and physicist widely recognised for his foundational contributions to theoretical climate dynamics and advanced data assimilation. Born in Budapest on 10 June 1944 and raised partly in Romania, he later moved to Israel, where he earned his B.Sc. (1966) and M.Sc. (1971) in Mechanical Engineering from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. He subsequently received his M.S. (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University under the supervision of Peter D. Lax. After twelve years at the Courant Institute, he joined the University of California, Los Angeles in 1985, serving as Chair of Atmospheric Sciences and Director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and now holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor. He has also served as Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he founded the Environmental Research and Teaching Institute and headed the Geosciences Department. A Member of Academia Europaea since 1998, he has received the European Geosciences Union’s Lewis Fry Richardson Medal and Alfred Wegener Medal, as well as the American Geophysical Union’s Edward N. Lorenz Lecture.

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His research applies nonlinear dynamical-systems theory—including bifurcation analysis, ergodic theory, and random dynamical systems—to atmospheric and oceanic dynamics, linking conceptual models with comprehensive climate simulations. He pioneered singular-spectrum analysis for climatic time series, advanced the theory of multiple weather regimes and their relationship to intraseasonal variability, and predicted the 6–7 kyr periodicity of Heinrich events before its observational identification. His work on sequential estimation and Kalman filtering has also played a major role in advancing the assimilation of satellite observations in meteorology, oceanography, and space physics. More recently, he has extended these approaches to population dynamics, macroeconomics, and coupled climate–economy–biosphere systems. Author or editor of more than a dozen books and nearly 350 research and review articles, he has accumulated over 14,800 citations and an h-index of 59. The five selected publications below—covering interdecadal climate variability and global warming (Nature, 1991), data assimilation in meteorology and oceanography (Advances in Geophysics, 1991), nonlinearity in the geosciences (Earth and Space Science, 2019), advanced spectral analysis of climate time series (Reviews of Geophysics, 2002), and the physics of climate variability and change (Reviews of Modern Physics, 2020)—reflect a career that has helped establish mathematical dynamical-systems theory and modern data assimilation as essential foundations of contemporary Earth-system science.