By Joseph Patton, Faculty Researcher for the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, College Park
Note: This is a guest blog post; it represents the views of the author alone and not the American Meteorological Society or the AMS Policy Program. Geosciences Congressional Visits Day is non-partisan, and promotes policy engagement without advocating for particular viewpoints.AMS has not taken a position on the legislation discussed by the author in this post.
In the pursuit of scientific advancements which benefit our communities, sometimes society and lawmakers lose perspective of the research workforce. A significant portion of scientific labor is done by postgraduate students and early-career professionals who often struggle to make ends meet while living in the large, expensive urban areas where their institutions are located. This puts undue financial stress on people who are already working long hours through nights and weekends to find and implement solutions to global problems. This financial insecurity threatens not only the livelihoods of these individuals, but also the quality of their work. No matter their academic wherewithal, someone who is constantly worried about making rent or affording groceries that month may accomplish less, or experience failing mental and physical health. I’ve noticed in my own work extreme disparities in pay for graduate researchers at higher education institutions that are just a few miles apart from each other in Maryland. I believe that it is paramount to our goals of advancing scientific research to ensure that the researchers carrying out this work are able to meet the basic needs of life.
That is why, this September, I was excited to take part in the Geosciences Congressional Visits Day (GEO-CVD) hosted by the AMS and other Earth science societies. GEO-CVD provides a one-day workshop on the federal policy process, followed by a day of visiting Congressional offices, meeting with staff to discuss issues that participants feel are important. My group, which included colleagues from the University of Maryland system, traveled to Capitol Hill to discuss several bills which directly address the financial and residential insecurities of the backbone of our scientific research workforce.
Our team met with the staff of the two Maryland senators, as well as the representative for the Congressional district including the University of Maryland.
The Bills
One bill for which my group advocated was the RESEARCHER Act, which directs the White House Office of Science and Technology to develop new policies and guidelines for federal research agencies to address the underlying causes of financial insecurity for student and early-career researchers. It would then require federal agencies to implement these policies. Such policies might include standardizing the pay of graduate and early-career researchers working under federal grants at public universities such as UMD, or new guidelines on official employment status and the availability of adequate, affordable healthcare, in addition to more issues surrounding their quality of life.
Joseph Patton stands in front of the U.S. Capitol Building (Photo: Joseph Patton)
Another bill we advocated for is the Keep STEM Talent Act. The United States attracts some of the best talent from all throughout the world with our first-rate universities and research institutions. Yet in addition to broad financial insecurities, many foreign nationals struggle with challenges in maintaining residency in the United States. The Keep STEM Talent Act would exempt researchers with a master’s degree or higher in their field of study from immigration limitations when seeking an immigration visa as a step toward permanent residency status. It would also allow those individuals to pursue an immigrant visa even while living in the country on a non-immigrant visa (e.g., a student visa). This would give the top minds in STEM fields a more secure way to approach living and working in the United States, while maintaining their ability to study and work at American universities in the meantime. Such changes would benefit the research capabilities of institutions across America and nurture the careers of scientists like my colleague Daile Zhang, a foreign national from China and a pioneering lightning researcher. After working in the United States for nearly a decade, she just this fall accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the University of North Dakota.
Joseph Patton, left, with his legislative science advocacy group for the Geosciences Congressional Visit Day in front of Sen. Van Hollen’s office (Photo: Joseph Patton)
Being Heard
Experiencing what it’s like to walk down the winding halls and seemingly endless basements of the buildings surrounding the U.S. Capitol Building was a career-defining opportunity. We briefly got to meet, in person, our representative in Congress, and feel like our voices were heard. We discussed issues close to us as researchers and as people. We genuinely feel empowered by the opportunity to effect change both in Maryland and at a federal level.
One thing I’ve learned from my career so far (I’ve been a graduate student, a federal employee, and now a faculty researcher), is that nearly every researcher is in their niche STEM field because they are incredibly passionate about the work that they do. Whether that’s an astrobiologist studying how to grow plants on Mars, a chemical engineer finding the next breakthrough in energy storage, or an oncologist working on the cure for a specific type of cancer, we blur the lines between work and personal time and spend long hours in the lab or at our workstations because our work is a part of who we are as people. It’s not for money, fame, or even recognition; it’s to make sense of the complicated natural world in which we all live, explore new possibilities, help people feel safe and secure in a sustainable way of life, and better our communities. When we take care of researchers, we all benefit from the result.
I want to send a sincere and heartfelt thank you to the American Meteorological Society for offering us the opportunity to learn about the science policy process as our team set out to advocate for issues that are close to us as researchers. I also want to send a special thanks to Emma Tipton, a policy fellow with AMS, for helping us individually work on our messaging and guiding us through the maze (literally and figuratively) of Congressional advocacy. We appreciate the time and efforts of the Congressional staffers and legislative aides for Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen as well as Representative Glenn Ivey.
<<Joseph Patton (center) stands on the steps of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol Building with his fellow legislative science policy advocates (Photo: Emma Tipton)
Photo at top: Joseph Patton with his legislative science advocacy group for the Geosciences Congressional Visit Day in front of Maryland Rep. Ivey’s office. (Photo: Joseph Patton)
About Geosciences Congressional Visits Day
Geosciences Congressional Visits Days (GEO-CVD) is a two-day, non-partisan science policy workshop hosted by AMS alongside other Earth science societies. Participants learn about Congress and build relationships with Congressional offices, to help ensure that Members of Congress and their staffs have access to the best available scientific information relating to weather, water and climate.
In recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month (15 September-15 October), the American Meteorological Society is spotlighting the amazing careers and contributions of a few of our Latinx/Hispanic community members.
This week, we hear from Dr. Maria J. Molina!
What is your current work? Can you tell us a bit about it?
I am currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland in College Park. One of my favorite parts of my job includes conducting research with graduate and undergraduate students, where we use machine learning to answer questions we have about weather and climate. I also get to teach courses like Physical Meteorology and Neural Networks for the Physical Sciences, both of which are really fun!
What was an important moment in your early career?
My years spent at the National Center for Atmospheric Research as an Advanced Study Program (ASP) postdoc and a project scientist were critically important for my career. During my time there, I gained confidence in myself as a scientist through the realization that it’s totally fine to not know things, and that we can always learn and grow at any age. I was able to see world-class scientists say, “I don’t know how to do that,” and then ask others for help, building professional collaborations and learning along the way. This is such a rewarding part of being a scientist; plus, it makes for a much more inclusive work environment.
What is something you’re proud of professionally?
By far, the professional experience I am most proud of is seeing students grow as researchers and critical thinkers. It is immensely rewarding when students start resolving their own software and methodology hurdles, and start coming up with research questions and ways to answer them on their own.
Are there ways in which your Hispanic/Latinx heritage has influenced or enriched your career?
Most definitely. As a Hispanic/Latinx immigrant that experienced extreme weather events growing up in South Florida, I empathize with vulnerable communities that experience extreme weather, oftentimes having to navigate complex decisions with language and cultural barriers. It has helped me appreciate the work done by social scientists and keep the human component of the Earth systems in mind as I conduct my research.
In recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), the American Meteorological Society is spotlighting the amazing careers and contributions of a few of our Latinx/Hispanic community members.
This week, we hear from Anthony Yanez!
What is your current work? Can you tell us a bit about it?
I recently became the Chief Meteorologist at KPRC 2, the NBC affiliate in Houston, Texas. This has been a long-time goal to reach, and it finally happened July 1st.
What was an important moment in your early career?
My career began in the sports department in my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico. After several years, I transitioned to the newsroom as a reporter and anchor. A pivotal moment in my career occurred when my boss saw a potential in me in another department. He said, “You have a better personality for weather. I’m moving you to the weather department.” His insight led me to discover a love for meteorology. Under the mentorship of Mike Hernandez, the chief meteorologist at the time, I received invaluable guidance that significantly shaped my career.
What is something you’re proud of professionally?
A highlight of my career was receiving the 2022 AMS Award for Excellence in Science Reporting by a Broadcast Meteorologist. My work in Los Angeles, covering wildfires, oceans, and climate issues, was both impactful and deeply fulfilling.
Are there ways in which your Hispanic/Latinx heritage has influenced or enriched your career?
As a Hispanic professional, I take pride in serving as a role model for the rapidly growing Hispanic community in the United States. During school visits, I make it a point to tell students that if I can achieve success, they can too. Additionally, my involvement with the Hispanic community in Houston, including serving as a past president of the Houston Association of Hispanic Media Professionals, enables me to support aspiring journalists by awarding college scholarships to deserving students.
The AMS Summer Community Meeting (SCM) drew exceptional attendance and engagement this year as people across sectors helped inform a major upcoming report on the Weather Enterprise. The AMS Weather Enterprise Study will provide a comprehensive picture of the shifting landscape of weather-related fields to inform our joint future. At the 2024 SCM, working groups discussed what they’d found about key issues facing the enterprise, and asked for feedback from the community.
Here are a few takeaways from the Research Enterprise working group, as reported by Daniel Rothenberg of Brightband.
Photo courtesy of Daniel Rothenberg.
How has the weather research landscape shifted in the last decade or so?
Two of the most important shifts have been a movement of exploratory and applied research from the public to the private sector, and the rise in importance of “data science” and other hybrid roles blending a mixture of domain expertise and broader engineering and technical skills.
Possibly the biggest example of these shifts coming together has been the advent of AI-based weather forecasting tools, although it also shows in trends such as the rise of private companies operating earth observation platforms.
What were the principal themes that came out of your working group’s discussions?
One major theme we discussed was the balance of responsibilities across the traditional weather enterprise. Initiatives such as building and launching satellite constellations or developing new weather models were at one point solely within the remit of the public sector (due to complexity and cost), but are now commonly undertaken by the private sector – sometimes even at start-up companies.
This re-balancing opens as many opportunities as it does challenges, and leads to another major theme: how we can best prepare for the workforce needs of today and tomorrow. Meteorologists will increasingly need to apply technical skills such as software development and data science alongside ones from the social sciences; preparing our current and future workforce for these demands will be a challenge in its own right.
A third major theme is that the weather enterprise is getting bigger. We’re not just a community of meteorologists anymore. Increasingly, critical work related to weather, water, climate, and their impacts on society is being undertaken beyond the traditional boundaries of our enterprise. There is a significant opportunity to improve society’s resilience if we as a community are able to build relationships with the new institutions working on these issues in a collaborative, interdisciplinary manner.
What are the main challenges you have identified?
Better accounting for how we ought to invest limited – and declining – federal resources will be a significant and contentious challenge, only complicated by the shifts in priorities and capabilities across the enterprise.
Those shifts motivate a second key challenge, which is clarifying who in the enterprise is accountable for, or has ownership over, certain areas. For example, NOAA makes available nearly all of the observations used in its operational forecast models, with some exceptions for proprietary data from commercial entities. But as more private companies try to sell data to NOAA, how will this balance hold? What if those private companies move towards selling actual weather modeling capabilities or services – perhaps a proprietary AI-based weather model – to the government? In the case of expanding commercial data purchases, who is responsible for maintaining and improving our data assimilation capabilities?
Coordinating many actors across the enterprise, in a manner that most effectively serves our mission to society, will be a key challenge we must navigate in the coming years.
What preliminary recommendations or future directions have you discussed?
Our tentative recommendations revolve around building robustness. We encourage academic organizations who train our future meteorologists to consider how to prepare these students to work in a multidisciplinary capacity, and to embrace data science skills. Not everyone needs to be an interdisciplinary scientist, but it’s vital that our students learn how to apply their deep domain knowledge as part of a team of such individuals.
We also acknowledge that the rise of AI/ML techniques is changing the demands of our computing and data infrastructure. Not only must our workforce learn to adapt to these technologies, but we must consider how the enterprise will support enabling them: for example, by ensuring that in addition to large, traditional high-performance computing resources, we provide access to GPUs and similar tools. As part of this re-evaluation, we must evolve the ways in which we as a community define our priorities for federal research funding
What did you hear from the community at the SCM?
We thank the community for the warm reception to our assessments at the Summer Community Meeting. Many of the themes we touched on – the re-balancing of capabilities across the enterprise, the emergence of AI/ML and its implications, as well as core workforce development concerns – were echoed across many other working groups, underscoring their importance.
Within our group, we also discussed the growing importance of convergence science, which was echoed several times throughout the meeting. Convergence science, which involves coordinating diverse, interdisciplinary research teams with real stakeholders to solve societally relevant problems, is likely to be an important mechanism of translational research in the future, but we (and others at the meeting) identified a need for federal agencies to devote more resources earmarked for this sort of work in order to complement traditional, siloed funding programs.
Want to join a Weather Enterprise Study working group? Email [email protected].
About the Weather Enterprise Study
The AMS Policy Program, working closely with the volunteer leadership of the Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise, is conducting a two-year effort (2023-2025) to assess how well the weather enterprise is performing, and to potentially develop new recommendations for how it might serve the public even better. Learn more here, give us your input via Google Forms, or get involved by contacting [email protected].
About the AMS Summer Community Meeting
The AMS Summer Community Meeting (SCM) is a special time for professionals from academia, industry, government, and NGOs to come together to discuss broader strategic priorities, identify challenges to be addressed and opportunities to collaborate, and share points of view on pressing topics. The SCM provides a unique, informal setting for constructive deliberation of current issues and development of a shared vision for the future. The 2024 Summer Community Meeting took place August 5-6 in Washington, DC, and focused special attention on the Weather Enterprise, with opportunities for the entire community to learn about, discuss, debate, and extend some of the preliminary findings coming from the AMS Weather Enterprise Study.
In support of its mission to advance science for the benefit of society, the American Meteorological Society publishes 12 peer-reviewed, highly regarded scientific journals. Over four thousand individual volunteer reviewers contribute reviews to AMS journals every year.
Peer reviewers are subject-matter experts who volunteer their time both to advise journal editors on the suitability of a manuscript for publication and to provide guidance to authors in improving the accuracy and readability of their study. Peer reviewers’ careful evaluation of manuscripts is essential to scientific communication.
During Peer Review Week each September AMS highlights recipients of the AMS Editor’s Award, which is given for excellence in reviewing. AMS reviewers almost always do their work anonymously, so the Editor’s Award and Peer Review Week are rare opportunities to thank at least some reviewers by name, and give them an opportunity to share their thoughts on this essential but unsung task.
“Peer review is not infallible, especially at the level of each individual paper, but it is an important mechanism for steering science in the long run towards better descriptions of how the world works.”
-Eric Firing, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
“[As a researcher] It’s often harder to explain what you’ve done than to do it in the first place. It’s easy to develop your own vocabulary for a problem that’s opaque to outside readers. A good reviewer will point out where my arguments are unclear and sometimes even help me clarify them. In the process, this often helps clarify my own thinking on the problem.”
-Christopher Pitt Wolfe, Stony Brook University
What keeps you motivated to review?
“I learn something from nearly every manuscript I review … One advantage of being a reviewer is to have the opportunity to read a manuscript that has not been published yet.”
-Lili Lei, Nanjing University, China
“In doing peer reviews, I have learned about new topics, methodologies, and trends in the field.”
-Will Cheng, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
“From both the perspective of a reviewer and an author, the review process often provides new angles of how your studies are comprehended by people whose expertise is different from yours. I find that both annoying (of course!) and enlightening.”
-Yunji Zhang, The Pennsylvania State University
“I’ve learned a lot of science from reviewing. Often, you have to read up on concepts that you don’t know well enough. Or you try to reproduce some results and, in the process, find something interesting.”
-Ingo Richter, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)
How do you approach the task of reviewing?
“It takes a lot of time to get research published. Reviewers are volunteers that take time out of their own work and lives to provide constructive feedback for people they may not know. It is a thankless job most of the time. Also, we don’t make up the rules as we go. We have standards and following those standards helps maintain objectivity and push the collective understanding of a given topic. Patience and understanding are key. It takes effort to provide a constructive and thorough review.”
-Stephen Strader, Villanova University
“Be purposefully constructive. The AMS provides great reviewer instructions. When following those instructions and drafting comments, I remind myself that my comments should serve the journal, the scientific enterprise, and the authors. I find it straightforward to focus on the first two, but the last is hard to deliver without some purposeful thinking. In practice, the outcome can too easily be comments that are excessively harsh or too generic to be helpful for authors. Thoughtful reviews can make a difference, especially for an early-career researcher. For example, reviewers offered specific suggestions that helped me improve my writing and research. By correcting my rookie mistakes early, those reviewers also spared the reviewers of my later studies some headaches. This is the power of being purposefully constructive.”
-Gan Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“The most important thing to keep in mind when reviewing a manuscript is to provide unbiased, objective, and constructive feedback to the authors. It is important to ensure that the methods/science is sound, which can be done by providing constructive comments and suggestions that the authors can use to improve the quality and robustness of their work.”
-Noah Samuel Brauer, NOAA/NWS Weather Prediction Center
“A paper should contribute to the current understanding of the topic. This could be a new discovery, a support or challenge of existing knowledge, or insights that can stimulate discussion in the community. As a reviewer, these are the aspects I focus on. However, it’s important to remember that reviewers are only the first judges of the paper — ultimately, readers will also assess it (and the reviewers’ judgment).”
-Young-Ha Kim, Seoul National University
“Everything should make sense in detail. If something doesn’t make sense, it could be wrong or simply not explained well (usually the latter). There should be enough information that a reader reasonably familiar with the field could reproduce the results (or at least the analysis) given sufficient time and resources.”
-Christopher Pitt Wolfe, Stony Brook University
“Whenever I review a manuscript, I try to make sure that it is pedagogical. That is, I want to make sure that if an early stage graduate student were to read it, they would be able to understand the background and gaps in the literature and follow the methodology. When I approach peer review through this lens, it helps identify areas that may be unclear to readers who are not experts in the specific subtopic, and overall improve the flow of the narrative.”
-Varvara Zemskova, University of Waterloo, Canada
“Advice I was given at some point (can’t remember from who) is that most manuscripts will get accepted somewhere. Thus, it is your job as a reviewer to help the authors get the manuscript accepted at the submitted journal if at all possible. This attitude has helped me feel aligned with the authors, rather than a gatekeeper.”
-Nathan Lenssen, Colorado School of Mines and NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
What has reviewing taught you about the scientific process?
“Peer review may sound like a dry, boring, non-stimulating activity. But in reality, peer review requires creative and critical thinking, and often I learn new facts about topics related to atmospheric science and/or am exposed to new ways of thinking about subjects I already know a lot about. Performing peer review has expanded my worldview and helped me develop the skill of examining issues from perspectives not native to my own history.”
-Jeffrey Duda, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, Earth System Research Lab
“To borrow from something I heard recently from a grade-school science teacher, it’s important to understand that science is never finished. Even if a study has been rigorously evaluated through peer review, in the future new data, methods, or interpretations could lead to a different set of conclusions. That being said, we can still take actions in response to the best information we have available, especially if the same conclusions have been found by multiple studies examining a question from many different angles.”
In recognition of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), the American Meteorological Society is spotlighting the amazing careers and contributions of a few of our Latinx/Hispanic community members. This week, we hear from Dr. Annareli Morales!
What is your current work? Can you tell us a bit about your research?
I am the air quality policy analyst for Weld County in northern Colorado. I’ve been working at the Department of Public Health and Environment for about 1.5 years. In my role, I’m responsible for performing data, legislative, and regulation review: gathering input from inside and outside our local government and providing recommendations to elected officials/department leadership as a subject matter expert. I am a resource on air quality related topics for boards, staff, towns/cities, and the general public.
What was an important moment in your early career?
Being selected to the NSF Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program at UCAR/NCAR was an important moment in undergrad. The program helped me grow my scientific network and learn professional skills like data analysis, research, public speaking, presenting technical information in a digestible manner, scientific writing, and much more. I was able to try different research subjects until I found the one that resonated with me. I also made wonderful, life-long friends who have supported me throughout my career and collaborated with me to change the culture in academia to a more inclusive and equitable one.
What is something you’re proud of professionally?
I’m proud of so many things, but the most recent is receiving the 2025 AMS Early Career Achievement Award. It fills my heart with joy to know that I made an impression in the lives of people who took the time to prepare a nomination package (it’s A LOT of work), and that my colleagues decided I was representative of what this award is intended to celebrate.
Are there ways in which your Hispanic/Latinx heritage has influenced or enriched your career?
My Mexican-American heritage has influenced my decisions throughout my career. Every time I think about science communication I think, “Would my mom be able to understand this?” I make sure I can express in both my languages how science impacts our day-to-day lives, and that science is for everyone.
Experiences and conversations with my family in Illinois and Mexico have sparked numerous research ideas, like understanding the variability of the midsummer drought in southwestern Mexico; analyzing the weather patterns associated with urban flooding in my hometown of Cicero, IL; and developing a Mesoamerica version of NCAR kilometer-scale climate simulations to facilitate orographic precipitation research in the complex topography of Mexico and Caribbean islands. My career has been enriched by mentoring and creating a smoother path for the next generation of Hispanic/Latinx scientists. I can’t wait to see what ideas they’ll explore.
Last month, we lost a giant in the field of meteorology. Through the course of her illustrious career, Eugenia Kalnay pioneered not only the fundamental science and practical applications of numerical weather prediction, she also influenced many careers. Her scientific contributions and leadership led to improved forecasts, helping save lives and property across the globe and making U.S. weather and seasonal climate prediction world-class.
Kalnay had deep ties with the AMS. In 1982, she became a Fellow of the AMS. She was elected to the AMS Council in 1995. In 2015, a named Symposium was held in her honor at the 95th AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix. The list of awards she received from the AMS includes the following: Jule G. Charney Award (1995), Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award (2015), Honorary Member (2015), and the first ever Jagadish Shukla Earth System Predictability Prize (2024).
Kalnay receiving the Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award in 2015 from AMS President William Gail. (Photo credit: AMS)
Kalnay exemplified simple living and high thinking. She demonstrated how one can, through grit and determination, overcome unforeseen obstacles and achieve what one sets out for oneself. In 1966, having completed her undergraduate degree, she was working as a meteorology research assistant at the University of Buenos Aires, when a military coup occurred in Argentina. In its wake, mass resignations and disruptions on campus made it untenable for her to continue to work there. Through the timely support and intervention of Dean Rolando Garcia, she got an opportunity to pursue her studies in meteorology at MIT. Her graduate advisor was Jule G. Charney.
The rest of her story will go down in the annals of meteorology.
In 1971 she became the first female PhD and, two years later, the first female professor in the MIT Department of Meteorology. She was a role model for other women that followed, including Paola Malanotte-Rizzoli and Inez Fung, pioneers in their own right. She later moved to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Laboratory for Atmospheres; in 1984, she became Head of the Global Modeling and Simulation Branch. From 1987 to 1997, she worked as director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modeling Center at NOAA.
Her efforts and leadership in data assimilation approaches at NCEP led to substantive improvements in weather forecast models. The data assimilation approaches she developed at NCEP, along with the “breeding method” she created with Zoltan Toth, helped improve weather forecasts, making a useful 10-day forecast possible.
Kalnay spearheaded a major reanalysis project of 40+ years of global climate data there (and later, 50- and 60-year reanalyses), which became a keystone for climate science. The 1996 paper in BAMS describing the 40-year reanalysis project has, at last count, been cited a staggering 35,330 times, making it one of the most widely referenced articles in geosciences. According to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, “The reanalysis is certainly the most scientifically fertile dataset in climate science since its creation (and perhaps for all time).”
The 50-year reanalysis data set was distributed as a CD-ROM at an AMS annual meeting. It was a precursor for other reanalysis datasets that followed, such as paleo reanalysis and climate of the 20th century.
<<The NCEP/NCAR 40-year Reanalysis Project paper was published in 1996 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
After retiring from federal service, Kalnay returned to academia and was appointed Robert E. Lowry Chair of the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. In 1999, she joined the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. She subsequently served as Distinguished University Professor and was an active researcher till the end.
In 2002 she published a book entitled Atmospheric Modeling, Data Assimilation and Predictability. It is now in its fifth edition, and has been translated into Chinese and Korean.
Left: Kalnay’s book, published in 2002.Center: Kalnay with Ron McPherson (left) and Louis Uccellini (right), both past AMS Presidents and former NCEP Directors, at the Symposium of the 50th Anniversary of Operational Numerical Weather Prediction, June 2004 (photo credit: NOAA NCEP). Right: Kalnayand two of her colleagues, Sumant Nigam and Zhanqing Li, were featured on the cover of the May 2004 issue of Science. The article highlighted foreign-born meteorologists from the University of Maryland, College Park’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science.
A 2010 interview in the WMO Bulletin gives us a glimpse into Kalnay’s passion for meteorology.
“I’m lucky to be working in atmospheric sciences,” she said. “It’s a fascinating subject. Working in meteorology is like working in physics, but without the danger of anybody saying, ‘So why are you doing that? What is the use?’ What we do is incredibly useful, especially since it is not national or regional, but global.”
In the past decade or so, Kalnay had been working on the leading-edge topic of climate change and sustainability, recognizing, as she and her colleagues wrote in a 2023 paper, that “the Earth is a very large and complex system that consists of human and natural components interacting bidirectionally with each other.” She and her team — which included Safa Mote and Jorge Rivas, Kalnay’s son — were extending concepts from weather forecasting, such as uncertainty, high sensitivity, and error propagation, to the coupled human-Earth system, and tackling its dynamic interactions.
Earth Day 2022: Safa Mote, Eugenia Kalnay, and Anjuli Bamzai. (Photo credit: Anjuli Bamzai)
Eugenia Kalnay was not only an active scientist who published her results in top-notch journals, she also engaged in practical applications of the science and promoted the kind of international collaborations that continue to advance atmospheric science for the benefit of global communities and economies. She was a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea and Argentine Academy of Physical Sciences, and 2009 winner of the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) Prize.
Eugenia inspired the next generation of scientists in the field, across many countries. She always maintained her academic connections to Argentina, including teaching courses and supervising research theses at the University of Buenos Aires, which granted her an honorary doctorate. She also has a women’s soccer team there named after her: Eugenia Kalnay FC!
Eugenia Kalnay was a major influence in Argentina as well as globally. Left: Kalnay (front row, second from right) with her mentor, Rolando Garcia (front row, far right) and her mentee, eminent atmospheric scientist Carolina Vera (center) in 2003, when Eugenia was designated member of the Argentina Academy of Exact and Natural Sciences. Top right: Kalnay with members of the Eugenia Kalnay football team. Bottom right: The full Eugenia Kalnay FC team. (Photo credit: Carolina Vera)
She was a beloved mentor, who was concerned not only with science but also nurturing people’s promise, collectively and individually—including advancing women in the field. An interview with the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences showcases some of the wisdom she left for us:
Of course, women should be in science! Why would one even think of wasting the brains of half of the scientifically inclined population?
The most important advice is to work on what you like to do, without worrying about money or recognition, which will come if you put passion in your work.
Learn to speak clearly, briefly and forcefully, and don’t allow others to interrupt you!
She was a kind a generous soul, and her unstinting generosity in providing advice, encouragement, leadership and inspiration will be missed. Her enduring legacy will be a beacon of light for generations to follow.
When I posted the sad news of her passing on the AMS Open Forum, there was an outpouring of condolences from every quarter of the globe.
Even as we grieve our loss, we celebrate her tremendous contributions and leadership.
Photos at top of post: Left: Eugenia Kalnay (photo credit: John Consoli, University of Maryland). Right: Kalnay and her son Jorge Rivas at the 2024 AMS Awards ceremony, where she received the Jagadish Shukla Earth System Predictability Prize (photo credit: AMS).
Anjuli is grateful to Katherine ‘Katie’ Pflaumer for providing useful edits.
A study in AMS journal Weather, Climate, and Society demonstrates the need to combine traditional and modern meteorological knowledge
A study published 20 August in the American Meteorological Society journal, Weather, Climate, and Society finds that traditional knowledge about nesting behaviors of the red-wattled lapwing (Vanellus indicus) is useful for helping farmers in Rajasthan, India predict seasonal rainfall—yet these nature-based indicators are less known among younger generations.
In areas like India’s southwestern Rajasthan, many farmers in tribal communities still lack access to accurate model-based weather forecasting applicable to their specific farm locations. In its place, older farmers often rely on traditional knowledge of the ecosystem around them. This includes predicting seasonal rains based on the nesting behavior of the red-wattled lapwing, a ground-nesting bird which lays its eggs near farm fields during the rainy season. For generations, some tribal farmers have used the positions of the birds’ nests and eggs for clues to help plant appropriate crops for upcoming weather conditions. But there has been relatively little scientific evidence gathered to back up this traditional knowledge, and younger farmers are less likely to rely on it—or even know about it.
A team of researchers from Agriculture University, Jodhpur and Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology studied the lapwings’ nesting behaviors at an average of 10–15 nests each year at agricultural research stations in southwestern Rajasthan. They related the behaviors to rainfall patterns and tested them against local traditional predictions.
The authors report that the field campaign supported many of the traditional predictions, especially those widely utilized indicators based on lapwing nest location, number of eggs, and the eggs’ position in the nest. For example, more eggs in the nest tended to correlate with more months of rain during the nesting season.
<< Red-wattled lapwing and (inset) a lapwing nest with four eggs. Figure 1 (a) from Bhardwaj et al. (2024).
[Note: The authors plan to publish additional data from the field study in an upcoming paper.]
“Integrating traditional knowledge with modern science can help in better understanding various climate-related parameters. Thus, our study suggests the need for a policy framework which will address the problem of the ineffective dissemination of information related to rainfall intensity and duration among local farmers, particularly in the remote rural areas, by traditional as well as modern meteorological announcements,” says Raju Lal Bhardwaj, lead author on the study.
Red-wattled lapwing nesting. Left: A lapwing with its pebble nest and three eggs; center: a lapwing nest with four eggs; right: a lapwing on its nest at an agricultural research station in Rajasthan. Photos courtesy of Raju Bhardwaj.
Weather patterns in southwestern Rajasthan are exceptionally variable, and will likely become more so with climate change. A survey conducted by the authors found that elder tribal farmers were less likely to plan their seasonal crops using “modern” meteorological forecasts. Instead, 70% used lapwing indicators to plan which fields to plant, and 85% used them to determine what crops to plant.
When nests were built at elevations higher than farm fields, farmers predicted high rainfall, planting water-tolerant monocultures like maize and sugarcane in fields with good drainage. When nests were built at elevations below farm fields and/or close to water bodies, they predicted low rainfall or drought—and therefore planted only hardy crops good for animal fodder. Years like 2017 supported such tactics: lapwings on average nested on higher ground that year; 797.5 mm of rain fell and crop yield was excellent.
Younger generations overlooked these traditional rain prediction indicators, with only 30% using lapwing indicators to help select planting locations. Younger farmers focused more on understanding data-based forecasting. In remote areas, however, they were sometimes unable to access those forecasts.
The authors suggest that lapwing nesting behaviors should be further studied and integrated into forecasting. “Modern meteorologist[s] should take advantage of the traditional knowledge of lapwing-based prediction methods that are not found in books but in the memories and experiences of elder tribal farmers,” they write. “Integrating this traditional knowledge with modern science can help in better understanding various climate-related parameters.”
Earth hit record highs in global temps, greenhouse gases, sea level, and more last year.
By AMS Staff
Last year, global high temperatures, warm oceans, and massive wildfires broke records and sparked increasing concern about climate change. Now the annual State of the Climate report, produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and peer reviewed and published by the American Meteorological Society, gives us an in-depth global picture of 2023, a year of extremes.
According to the NOAA/AMS press release, the State of the Climate report this year includes contributions from more than 590 scientists from 59 countries, and “provides the most comprehensive update on Earth’s climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice and in space.”
Below are a few highlights from 2023.
Record-high greenhouse gases (again)
Global atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide all reached higher concentrations than ever recorded. CO2 was 419.3±0.1ppm, 2.8 ppm higher than in 2023 and 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. This is the fourth-largest recorded year-to-year rise in CO2.
Record-high global temperatures
2023 officially beat 2016’s record as the hottest year overall since records began in the 1800s, partly due to the transition from La Niña to a strong El Niño. Globally, 2023 was 0.99°–1.08°F (0.13°–0.17°C) above the 1991–2020 average. The years 2015–2023 have been the hottest nine years on record.
Global Surface Temperatures Were Above Average Across Most of the World (Plate 2.1a in State of the Climate in 2023): During 2023, much-warmer-than-average conditions were observed across most of the world’s surface, with the largest positive temperature anomalies across parts of the higher northern latitudes, shown here as areas shaded from orange to red. Limited areas experienced near-average to cooler-than-average conditions (blue shading).[Note: graphic shows 2023 average temperature anomalies above or below the 1991-2020 average global temperature.]
North America overall experienced its warmest year since records began in 1910, including a heat wave in Mexico that killed 286 people. The Caribbean also experienced its warmest recorded year, and Europe its warmest or second-warmest depending on the analysis.
In Kyoto, Japan, the cherry trees reached peak bloom on March 25, the earliest bloom in the city’s 1,200-year record. Photo: Balazs Simon on Pexels.
Record-high ocean heat
El Niño also contributed to the hottest oceans ever recorded. Mean annual global sea-surface temperature was 0.23°F (0.13°C) higher than 2016’s previous record, and August 22, 2023 saw an all-time high daily mean global sea-surface temperature of 66.18°F (18.99°C). Marine heat waves were recorded on 116 days of 2023 (vs. the previous record of 86 days in 2016) and global ocean heat content down to 2,000 feet also reached record highs.
Record-high sea levels (again)
Global mean sea level rose 8.1±1.5 mm in 2023, to reach a record 101.4 millimeters above the average from 1993, when satellite measurements began.
Massive wildfires caused by heat and drought
37 million acres of Canada burned in 2023, twice the previous record, causing evacuations for more than 232,000 people and with smoke affecting cities as far away as western Europe. Australia experienced its driest August–October since 1900, leading to millions of acres burned in bushfires in the Northern Territory. The European Union experienced its largest wildfire since 2000 (in the Alexandroupolis Municipality of Greece). Notable wildfires also occurred in Brazil, Paraguay, and in the U.S. state of Hawaii.
Warm poles and a greener Arctic
2023 was the fourth warmest year in the Arctic in the 124-year record, and the warmest recorded June–September. Sea ice reached its fifth-lowest extent in the 45-year record (with many monthly and daily records set), and multi-year ice declined. Despite above-average spring snowpack in the North American and Eurasian Arctic, rapid melting led to record and near-record lows in snow-water equivalent by June. The Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage both opened, and the Northwest Passage saw a record 42 ship transits. Arctic tundra vegetation reached its third-greenest peak in the 24-year record.
Much of Antarctica also experienced well-above-average heat. In addition, eight months, and 278 days, saw record lows in sea ice extent and area in Antarctica; daily sea ice extent on 21 February was the lowest ever recorded.
Clean infrared image of Hurricane Otis making landfall near Acapulco, Mexico. Image captured on 25 October, 2023, at 5:20 UTC, by the ABI instrument aboard the GOES-East satellite. Source: NASA Worldview.
There were 82 named tropical storms in 2023, below average. However, global accumulated cyclone energy was above average, rebounding from 2022’s record low, and there were seven Category 5 cyclones. Tropical Cyclone Freddy became the longest lived tropical cyclone on record, lasting from February 6 to March 12; it made landfall three times and caused 165 fatalities in Mozambique and 679 fatalities in Malawi due to flooding and landslides. Typhoon Doksuri/Egay was the costliest economically, causing US$18.4 billion in damages; Beijing saw its heaviest recorded rainfall and 137 residents died in flooding. Rain and floods from Storm Daniel killed at least 4,300 people in Libya. Hurricane Otis underwent the most extreme rapid intensification on record—Category 1 to Category 5 in only nine hours—and became the strongest landfalling hurricane to hit western Mexico, devastating Acapulco.
Persistent ozone hole
The stratospheric ozone hole over Antarctica appeared earlier in the year and lasted longer than normal, and reached its 16th largest extent in 44 years.
Image at top: Ice Worm Glacier in the North Cascade mountains of Washington, United States, which was under continuous annual monitoring from 1984 onward and disappeared in 2023. Large photo: The location of former Ice Worm Glacier on 13 August 2023. Inset photo: Ice Worm Glacier on 16 August 1986. Photo credits Mauri Pelto.
A new NOAA oral history archive spotlights lessons from a life in science and policy
William H. “Bill” Hooke, PhD (AMS senior policy fellow emeritus), has both led and thought a great deal about developments in weather, water, climate (WWC) and society at large over more than half a century. He worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and antecedent agencies from 1967 to 2000, including tenures as Deputy Chief Scientist and Acting Chief Scientist of NOAA, as well as Senior Scientist in the Office of the Secretary of Commerce. An honorary AMS member, he has served as a senior AMS policy fellow, associate executive director, and director of the AMS Policy Program. He founded the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium, which he directed for 21 years.
Over the course of many jobs, administrations, and scientific revolutions, Hooke developed a reputation for exceptional leadership and collaboration, for managing crucial initiatives in natural disaster reduction and national policy, and for deep and multidisciplinary insights across scientific and social fields. He has influenced the careers and lives of many people in the WWC enterprise, and won the AMS’s Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award (now the Robert H. and Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award) in 2014. Now, an oral history video series from NOAA captures some thoughts and observations from his long and vibrant career.
In a series of 30 candid conversations, Hooke talks to AMS Policy Colloquium alumna Mona Behl about his life in a family of scientists; his contributions to disaster reduction, the evolution of the WWC Enterprise, and technological innovations; and what it means to be a leader, a scientist, and a person of faith.
Watch the first video in the series
Here are a few excerpts from their rich conversations.
On luck:
“My dad was born in Chattanooga … in 1918. … The doctor told my grandmother afterwards, he said, “Mrs. Hooke, that’s the biggest baby I ever delivered whose mother lived.” And in fact [maybe] the reason I’m alive today, is that while the doctor was getting ready to tell my grandfather that he had to choose between my grandmother and my dad, my grandfather was nervously walking around outside the hospital, around the block. By the time he came back in for that consultation, my dad had been born. I’ve reflected a lot … that all of us represent just this accident of history. … We’re all lucky to be here.”
On his childhood and his family’s academic legacy:
“When [my grandfather, who received his PhD from the Sorbonne] came back to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, he and my grandmother used to have a salon. … People would smoke cigars, and faculty members from the university would come over, and there was just this great conversation and a lot of laughter and so on. As a kid, every time I visited, we’d get to see this scene and participate in it and actually come to like the smell of cigar smoke, although I never smoked. … It was just quite a scene. A spectacular thing to see growing up.”
“[My father, Robert Hooke,] was very interested in problems that were tough to solve. … He thought most of the interesting problems in the world didn’t have solutions. He used to say things like, “Linear problems are all the same. Nonlinear problems are always different.” … The one patent he ever got was for something called Direct Search, which was looking for optima when there was no formula for them.”
“[Getting a PhD in geophysical sciences] was a lack of imagination. Here I was in this tribe of scientists, and it never occurred to me to be anything else. … I woke up with a PhD and thought, ‘Now what?’”
On his early career:
“I never got the job I applied for, and I never turned down one that was offered. … So, I took this job at the Ionospheric Telecommunications Laboratory [in 1967]. … [But when Nixon created NOAA, my boss transferred me to] the Wave Propagation Lab. That was cutting-edge. … [Gordon Little, who ran the lab,] realized that remote sensing was the key to learning about … the atmosphere, the oceans, the solid Earth. … All of these technologies – acoustic sounding, weather radar, Doppler lidar, other techniques, radiometry – were in their infancy, and nothing worked. So, when things started to work, they’d start seeing atmospheric phenomena that nobody had ever seen before … If you had half a brain, you could wander around and you were seeing things that nobody had seen and applying simple ideas to them, and they worked.”
On learning how to manage and lead:
“[Gordon Little] didn’t care much about the Geoacoustics group [at the Wave Propagation Lab] so he put me in charge.] … Well, in our group, we always had a brown bag lunch every day. … The conversation would usually move on, oblivious to whatever I was trying to say. But that lunch [after Little announced the change] … I said something [and] there was this hush that fell over the group. Wow. I realized, from now on, I’m walking in a hall of mirrors. People are only going to show me the side that they think I’m going to like. It was a very important moment for me … One of the things that you learn is, the higher you go … you have to get gentler and gentler and gentler if you really want people to open up to you and for the group to be vibrant the way it should be.”
“If [a leader’s dream is] a small dream, if it’s like, “Hey, we’re going to do this, and a small number of us will get rich.” … It can’t be a shabby dream. People are put off by that. The second thing is it’s got to be a shared dream. … If you don’t share your ideas, they get smaller and smaller and less relevant and really kind of a grotesque version of what they were meant to be. But if you share your ideas, then other people riff on them, and … it actually generates ideas. … People want to be around you. You’re not a sink for thought; you’re a source of it.”
On advice for early career scientists:
“If you’re an early career scientist, you live in a world that encourages you to be anxious and stressed and to feel insecure, maybe even fearful. … [But] the world is hungry for talent. We just have unlimited needs for brain power right now. Brain power is in very short supply, and if you have … something to offer, people are standing in line to harness it and to work with you. It’s just a message that young people need to hear, and they can’t hear it enough.”
On legacy and achievements:
“I have a very dim view of my achievements. … I had the very good fortune to work with just brilliant people. … There’s so much you can do to stifle creativity and innovation, but trying to [instead] stay out of the way of people who are in that business; that means working up the ladder to make that [innovative work] possible for those people. … You need to just be saying thank you and encouraging people day in and day out, hour in and hour out, and you add it up after forty, fifty years, and it has an accumulated effect.”
“I’ve worked with a lot of people who made great contributions to improving weather and climate warnings, but I probably had nothing to do with that myself. … I led efforts where great progress was made. … In particular, a lot of work in small-scale weather, short-term weather, aviation weather, things of that sort. Those were, again, things [that] groups I managed worked on. Made a lot of progress on those things, but it was wonderfully sharp people who did it, and I just kind of went along.”
On civil service:
“The work we’re engaged in is a high calling. I got interested in science because I was good at it, and it was fun. It became serious business, particularly after I got into the hazards work, starting with that Academy panel I was on in 1986, the one that set up the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. … The people were just high-minded people. I saw a lot to admire in the people I was involved with.”
“One piece of advice that I’d give every NOAA employee. … You should take a lot of satisfaction from your role as a civil servant in NOAA and what you’re contributing to society. It’s very easy to see all the things and all the dysfunction and the budget problems … [and] interagency squabbles and the rest of it. … You should just be strong about the value of what you’re doing.”
On the philosophy of science, AI, and innovation:
“Scientists, we might be unique in our difficulty at understanding that we’re not pure. [laughter] We struggle so much to work on the objective part and the experiments in the lab … that we forget that science is a human construct … You have to think a lot more about the human purposes and the human goals and so on. … With artificial intelligence[,] I think we’re all seeing in a vague sort of way, “Wow, this has so much potential for both good and evil.” I don’t think there’s been a moment since the construction of nuclear weapons that people have been [so] apprehensive about the steps we’re now taking. These are steps that have nothing to do with science as we understand it; it has everything to do with humanity. We don’t trust ourselves … to control this science for the benefit and use of life versus those inferior things – fame and power, money and so on – that [Francis] Bacon spoke of.”
“When it comes to science that matters … you want multiple paths to it. You want redundancy. One of the things I fought all my career was this bureaucratic tendency to try to reduce duplication in science, and overlap, and I kept thinking, ‘No. On innovation, you want to be doing as much as you can afford.’”
“AI will probably exacerbate this [current breakdown of social trust] to some extent. … I think we’re in for … a Wild West kind of frontier-like period [in which] wonderful things and horrible things are going to happen at a higher rate of speed than usual. Human beings are going to have a period of trying to deal with that. I think that’s why, to me, it’s getting more and more important that we learn how to be forgiving.”
“Tom [Durham] had written just a stellar disaster preparedness strategy for the State of Tennessee. … Tom had a lot of expertise, and he brought it to bear on this very thoughtful strategy and worked with people to develop it and get started implementing different aspects of it. … That would be the kind of thing that more people could do if aided by artificial intelligence.”
“When I was still living out of Boulder … we had some huge thunderstorms moving rapidly through the Denver area. There was a small echo up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that didn’t seem worth paying much attention to. Well, it stayed put for six hours … [and] one or two people drowned when the flooding occurred. That’s the kind of thing that an artificial intelligence system might be better at capturing, that kind of alertness and just looking for a detail … that other people might miss. So, I think AI really changes the possibilities for good if we have good intentions and look for ways to harness it. … It’s going to be fun to sort it out. But I think it really changes things.”
On confronting environmental change:
“To get out of the pickle that we’re in with regard to climate change and broader environmental issues … we have to be good as much as we have to understand the science of things. … We’ve got eight billion people playing some version of [game theory] – lack of trust, lack of forgiveness, lack of tolerance. [And] there’s a lot of complacency about all the aggression that we’re visiting on others. … I’ve been very interested in the whole rise of the diversity, equity, inclusion kind [of thing] because it seems to me it’s getting at this … at the level that it really needs to get at it.”
“We are each responsible for fixing it, whatever the problem is. That doesn’t mean changing history; you can’t do that. It is what it is. It means a path forward. … We have to work on the problem all of us together, and that’s eight billion of us. Everybody has something to offer. Everybody has something to regret. It’s our job right now. It’s the 21st-century task. … Suppose you decide that your task in life is to be responsible for the renewal of the world versus your task in life is to document the collapse of the world. Choosing the second one over the first is a poor trade [laughter] in so many ways.”
On his work in natural disaster reduction/resilience:
“The Subcommittee for Natural Disaster Reduction was under this Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. … We felt that our goal was really to try to build US resilience. … It’s really people who were disadvantaged, to begin with, who are hurt most by natural disasters when they occur … I think I told you I’ve always been interested in political science … But it just got to be a much richer thing after that. … I went from feeling excited about what I was doing because it was just so interesting, to feeling each day that I could help make the world a better place.”
“A lot of interest in the government [at the time was on climate change] – this was the Clinton Administration … If you were working on natural hazards, you were struck by [the sense] that the planet really did much of its business through extreme events. These averages that were of so much concern were the averages of extremes of heat and cold, extremes of precipitation and drought. … [Today] we see people putting those two things together.”
“The President looks at a certain number of disaster declarations over the year … But for each of the local officials, it’s life-changing. … the incentives for thinking ahead locally for events like this are just so much stronger than the incentives for a President of the United States to look at these matters. I continue to feel that the best thing to do would be [to] give people at the local level more tools for dealing with this.”
On the AMS Policy Program and Policy Colloquium:
“I was minding my own business. In the year 2000, I was thinking I had about ten or fifteen more years to go in government … I got invited downtown to the DC offices of the American Meteorological Society by Ron McPherson, who was the executive director at the time, and Dick Greenfield, who was standing up this new thing called the AMS Policy Program. … They asked me, ‘Well, when could you start?’ And I said, ‘Two weeks.’ [laughter]”
“I had basically a year to kind of get [the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium] ready and got it started in [2001]. … One of the things I found out pretty early was all the congressional staffers, policy officials in the government, and so on – they were looking for something like this, too, and they were skeptical that maybe the AMS could deliver … But after they came the first time and saw how bright the Colloquium participants were … the speakers just thought, “What a great group. What a great format. All this time for discussion” and so on. Sometimes, they’d come early and hear their colleagues’ lectures or stay late for another colleague’s lecture. That added kind of to the vibe. They’d ask questions as part of the discussion. It was, thanks to the participants, really lively.”
“The Colloquium was a way of showing people that the real world wasn’t operating on the basis of the Navier-Stokes equations, or the rules of radiative transfer, or plasma physics, or whatever – it was working on heuristics, conjecture, power and courage, and trust and faith, and a whole bunch of things on which all those equations are silent. … [As scientists,] we’re not used to being as disciplined in our approach to the policy process as we are to science. This was an effort to overcome that. … I really think the whole thing was a tribute to, again, just the passion that the science leadership of this country, government agencies, and staffers on the Hill had for it and the quality of the participants that were coming in … The people made it all work. … It was just a privilege to be part of it for two decades and to just watch this sweep of intellect, energy, and talent go by.”
On retiring (or not):
“My uncle “retired” in his fifties and moved back to North Carolina. But at the age of eighty-something, he was still getting research grants from DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] to do these non-fusion applications of plasmas. He was part owner of a drugstore on the main street in North Carolina. … He would do his physics there in the diner and kind of go over to the university … He was the inspiration to me. I kind of felt as long as my uncle was still working, who was thirteen years older than I was, I ought to be working, too. Only I did it in a more formal way and I’m just tremendously happy I did. These last twenty years or so of my career were the best by far.”
NOAA Heritage Oral History Project aims to document the history and legacy of NOAA through compelling interviews with its leaders. These firsthand accounts provide an invaluable resource that preserves NOAA’s significant contributions to environmental research and management, fostering a deeper understanding of NOAA’s vital role in shaping our understanding of the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Learn more here.
