Jim Kinter is a Professor at George Mason University in the department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences. He serves as Director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) and the Virginia Climate Center (VCC). Specializing in climate modeling, he studies climate variability and predictability of seasonal phenomena and weather extremes. His research has contributed to successful seasonal prediction of El Nino, monsoons, and North American climate variations. Dr. Kinter leads the VCC to help local communities enhance their resilience to the impacts of climate change through direct engagement to co-produce risk assessments and explore solutions. After earning his doctorate in geophysical fluid dynamics at Princeton University in 1984, Dr. Kinter served as a National Research Council Associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and as a faculty member of the University of Maryland prior to helping to create COLA. He is a Member of the Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
Contact Information
Website
Google Scholar
Jim Kinter
Selected Publications
Gaal, R. and J. L. Kinter 2021: Soil Moisture Influence on the Incidence of Summer Mesoscale Convective Systems in the U.S. Great Plains. Mon. Wea. Rev., 149, 3981-3994, https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/149/12/MWR-D-21-0140.1.xml
Singh, B. and J. L. Kinter, 2020: Tracking of Tropical Intraseasonal Convective Anomalies: Part 1: Seasonality of the Tropical Intraseasonal Oscillations. J. Geophys. Res., 125, e2019JD030873
Kinter, J. L., et al., 2013: Revolutionizing Climate Modeling – Project Athena: A Multi-Institutional, International Collaboration. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94, 231-245. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/94/2/bams-d-11-00043.1.xml”
Courses Taught
CLIM 101 Global Warming: Weather, Climate and Global Society
CLIM 751 Predictability and Prediction of Earth’s Climate
Education
1983-1984 Post-doctoral: NRC Associate – NASA Goddard, Greenbelt, MD
1984 Ph.D. (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics) Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
1981 M.A. (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics) Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
1979 A.B. (Mathematics) Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Recent Accomplishments
Member, Virginia Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Chair, GMU Grand Challenges Initiative committee
Co-chair, NOAA Community Modeling Board
Member, NAS/NRC Committee on Foundational Research Gaps for Digital Twins
Publications:
• Reed, A. T., J. L. Kinter, and D. M. Straus, 2025: Observed Changes of Poleward Energy Transport for Northern Hemisphere Cool-season Extratropical Cyclones: A Multi-perspective Eulerian Approach. Climate Dyn. (submitted).
• Khalid, Z., P. J. Ruess, A. de S. de Lima, A. Khalid; T. Miesse, D. Veronez, C. M. Ferreira, and J. L. Kinter, 2025: DEMend: Automating hydrological correction of Digital Elevation Models for enhanced urban flood modeling. Water Resources Mgt., https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-025-04226-2
• Ruess, P. J.; Z. Khalid, C. M. Ferreira, J. L. Kinter, 2025: Social and Environmental Justice Implications of Flood-Related Road Closures in Virginia. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduction, 117, 105123, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2024.105123.
• Gaal, R., J. L. Kinter, P. A. Dirmeyer, and B. Singh, 2024. Identifying the mechanism of interaction between soil moisture state and summertime MCS initiations in weakly forced synoptic environments using convective‐permitting simulations. J. . Geophys. Res.: Atmos., 129, e2024JD040855. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD040855
• Coelho, G. de A., C. M. Ferreira, J. L. Kinter, F. Cassalho, 2024: Real-time short-range flood forecasting based on a watershed scale 2-D hydrodynamic model and high-resolution precipitation forecast ensemble. J. Hydrol. (in press), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.132564.
Talks:
• Climate Services in Virginia (invited, Resilient Virginia Conference, July 2025, Harrisonburg, VA)
• Climate Change Where We Live: The Reality, the Inevitable, and Hope for the Future (public lecture, on request, about once per month)
Dissertations Supervised
J. Nattala (2013); Bohar Singh (2017), Rachel Gaal (2023), Austin Reed (candidate), Ji-Young Jung (pre-candidacy)