Research Highlights
Research Interests
Air-sea interaction processes in extreme wind environments, such as Tropical cyclones, using Earth system models.
Hyun-Sook Kim, Ph.D.
Oceanographer, Physical Oceanography Division
301.789.6806
Hyun-Sook.Kim@noaa.gov
4301 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami, Florida 33149
“Category 5 hurricane Dorian (2019) who shut down the Florida current transport by almost a half while stalling over the Bahama once again demonstrates the power of Mother Nature. My love for discovery and marriage to science has drawn me to study extreme events that push the limit of our understanding of nature. “
Dr. Hyun-Sook Kim is a research scientist at the Physical Oceanography Division of NOAA-AOML. She is trained as an observational oceanographer and numerical modeler. Her research interest is the air-sea interaction processes in extreme wind environments, such as Tropical cyclones, using Earth system models. Dr. Hyun-Sook Kim works closely with NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center to transition coupled hurricane modeling systems (e.g., HWRF, HMON and HAFS) to operations. Her recent work contributes to the advancement to a 3-way coupling hurricane-ocean-wave model that can better characterize and predict the air-sea interactions and physical processes. She also works with data assimilation, to improve prediction skills.
Current Work
1994, Ph.D. Physical Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI
1991, M.S. Physical Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI
- Guan, S., Huang, M., Cai, W., Zhang, Z., Lin, I.I., Kim, H.S., Zhou, L., Lin, X., Xu, Z., Jin, F.F. and Mei, W. Weak self-induced cooling of tropical cyclones amid fast sea surface warming Nature Geoscience, 1-6., https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-01879-x 2026
Ref. 4519 - Li, T. H., Wang, X., Lu, X., Yang, Y., Zhang, J. A., & Kim, H. S. Using Novel Observations to Evaluate Background Ensemble Forecasts at the Air-Sea Interface from a Self-Cycled HAFS Data Assimilation System for Hurricane Fiona (2022) Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 131(5), e2025JD044344, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JD044344 2026
Ref. 4559 - Alaka, G.J. Jr., J.A. Sippel, Z. Zhang, H.-S Kim, F. Marks, V. Tallapragada, A. Mehra, X. Zhang, A. Poyer, and S.G. Gopalakrishnan. Lifetime performance of the operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model (HWRF) for North Atlantic tropical cyclones. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105(6):E932-E961, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0139.1 2024
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