Katherine Pflaumer

A Week in Washington for a Student Scientist

Photo: Haven Cashwell in front of the U.S. Capitol Building

Guest post by Haven Cashwell, PhD Student and Graduate Research Assistant at Auburn University

From my small hometown of Marshallberg in eastern North Carolina, and even my current home as a researcher and PhD student at Auburn University, the chambers of Congress have always felt like a different world. I had never even visited Washington, D.C., before, so truly I did not know what the policy world looked like. The recent AMS Summer Policy Colloquium opened these doors to me and showed that the pathway between research and policy isn’t as distant as I once thought.

The integration of science and policy has always intrigued me—such as policy for coastal resiliency, since my hometown of Marshallberg, NC is being impacted by climatic changes—but I was not aware of how that process worked. As I finish my PhD, I’m also exploring possible career paths that I could take after graduating. One aspect of my current research involves assessing and communicating climate and health risk factors with frontline communities in the Carolinas, which has made connections with the policy process feel even more pressing.

My mentor for an internship this summer is Dr. Kathie Dello, North Carolina’s state climatologist, who previously attended the colloquium and encouraged me to participate as well. After a week at the Colloquium, I left with lots of new knowledge and a much greater appreciation of how the policymaking process works.

For instance, I learned about the concepts of science for policy and policy for science, and how to navigate the two. Given my background in science communication, the idea of translating scientific evidence and research results to be usable and actionable (science for policy) felt very familiar, but I gained a new understanding of how policy affects funding that goes to different agencies for scientific research (policy for science). 

The 2023 AMS Summer Policy Colloquium cohort walking to Capitol Hill

Together with several dozen fellow scientists, I heard from professionals working in the policy world. They represented careers ranging from those having to do with the federal budget process to congressional staffers working directly with members of congress on science initiatives. I had no idea the options were so broad and varied. And far from the common perception that policy has to be dull, these speakers had great passion for their own work and a clear enthusiasm for sharing that with my peers and me.

We put our knowledge into practice in a legislative exercise that was sprinkled throughout the week. Participants were separated into groups and assigned to play the role of a senator marking up certain legislation. The goal was to get an understanding of how politics, policy, and procedure interact in the legislative process by creating amendments to bills and working together to create a significant piece of legislation. Much enthusiasm was shared among the participants at the end of the week when “voting” for the legislation, as the hard work throughout the entire week was put into practice. 

I left the Colloquium not only with a much better understanding of how science and policy can connect, but also with a new cohort with whom I networked throughout the week. Whether our careers keep us in the sciences or shift toward the world of policy, I’m excited for our paths to cross in the future and see how our experiences from this week in Washington shape our own work.

I would recommend attending the Summer Policy Colloquium to any young scientist who is interested in the policy process. By being better informed about how science and policy intersect, I’m now able to consider how my own research could fit in, whether it’s sharing how results from my research could influence policy or how to communicate and collaborate with policymakers in general.  

The 2023 AMS Summer Policy Colloquium cohort

Whether my future takes me back to small towns facing climate risks, leading research universities, or even a career in the policy sector, I know that the Summer Policy Colloquium has given me the tools and knowledge to be a more well-rounded researcher capable of connecting with the world of policy.

About the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium

The AMS Summer Policy Colloquium provides an overview of policy basics and decision-making in the earth and atmospheric sciences, along with opportunities to meet and dialogue with federal officials, Congressional staffers, and other decision-makers. Aimed at early and mid-level federal managers, scientists, private-sector executives, university faculty, and selected graduate students and fellows, the Colloquium helps participants build skills and contacts, gauge interest in science policy and program leadership, and explore selected issues in depth.

In the Field: Understanding Canyon Fires

A Research Spotlight from the 14th Annual Fire and Forest Meteorology Symposium, 2–4 May, 2023

The California Canyon Fire controlled burn moves upslope. Image: San José State University

Wildfires in complex terrain like canyons are known to be particularly dangerous. Canyon fires often “blow up” or “erupt,” exploding suddenly with intense heat and spreading rapidly—and too often causing fatalities among firefighters. In the ninth session of the 14th Fire and Forest Meteorology Symposium on 4 May, Maritza Arreola Amaya presented initial results from the California Canyon Fire experiment, a controlled burn that was intensively documented to help better understand the behavior of canyon fires.

In this experiment, conducted in Central California’s Gabilan Range, a fire was ignited and monitored by a large team who placed sensors around the fire site and monitored the blaze from the ground, from the air with balloons, drones and helicopters; from meteorological towers; and with vehicle-mounted instruments including Radar, LiDAR (“light detection and ranging,” which uses laser light pulses to build three-dimensional images), and SoDAR (“sonic detection and ranging,” which uses sound waves to measure wind speed at different heights). The fire was lit near the bottom of the canyon in steep terrain of chaparral and sparse oak trees. It moved quickly up the canyon, the first time a fire of this size has naturally done so while under intense monitoring.

Flame attachment and v-shaped spread of the California Canyon Fire controlled burn. Image: CAL FIRE

The fire spread up the walls of the canyon in a “v” shape. It clearly exhibited eruptive behavior including flame attachment—in which hot gases rising from the fire downslope heat the unburned fuel further up the slope, leading to an intense, quickly spreading fire front. A highly turbulent, rotating plume of smoke emerged, and air was rapidly entrained into the fire, where temperatures reached nearly 800 degrees Centigrade (1472 Fahrenheit).

While some instruments were destroyed by the flames, researchers at San Jose State, the NSF-UICRC Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center, and more are eagerly analyzing the data collected to help improve understanding and modeling of dangerous canyon fires.

“Working on this one-of-a-kind canyon project was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Seeing the experiment that took so long to organize and set up finally come to life was amazing. It involved countless hours setting up complicated instrumentation so that ultimately the behavior of a wildfire on canyon terrain could be analyzed for the first time naturally moving up a large canyon. I know that this successful experiment will play a big part in future investigations involving wildfires on complex terrain and the danger they bring to firefighters.”

Maritza Arreola Amaya

Meeting registrants can view the recording of this session here. Recordings become publicly available three months after the meeting.

For a real-life example of a fatal canyon fire and the weather conditions that worsened it, see our post about the Yarnell Hill Fire.

About 14Fire

Meteorology and wildfires are intimately interconnected—and wildfires are becoming increasingly severe and frequent in many parts of the United States. From local residents and firefighters on the ground to planners and insurers, to people hundreds of miles away breathing wind-driven smoke, society relies on our ever-improving ability to understand and forecast the atmospheric conditions relating to wildfire. The American Meteorological Society’s 14th Fire and Forest Meteorology Symposium brought together researchers and fire managers to discuss the latest science.

The U.S. Budget in 5 Minutes: A Primer for Scientists

The U.S. Capitol Building on a banknote

By Katie Pflaumer, AMS Marketing Communications Manager, and Paul Higgins, AMS Associate Executive Director for Policy

The federal budget is the cornerstone for much of the scientific funding in the United States. Directly or indirectly, federal funding impacts the work of almost all AMS members and those in related fields. But do you know how it works? Even if you’re not attending the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium this coming week, you can still get a sense of budget basics with this quick guide from the AMS Policy Program.

Science, Policy, and the Budget

Scientific insights can influence policy and help improve it—this is one major way that science matters to society, whether we’re determining how to manage reservoirs or what we are going to do about climate change. But however you slice it, the decisions made by policymakers and politicians also affect how we practice science. Perhaps the most prominent way is through funding for research—determining what gets funded, and how much.

For our purposes, the two key components of the U.S. federal budget are revenue (taxes and fees taken in by the federal government) and spending.

  • Mandatory spending is required by existing public law or statute. Nearly two-thirds of government spending comes from existing laws—such as those that fund Social Security and Medicare along with payments on the nation’s debt.
  • Discretionary spending has to be funded each year or at other regular intervals through an act of Congress. Many government agencies (including scientific ones) rely on discretionary spending.

The annual budget process is how the U.S. Government determines its discretionary spending. The budget is a highly political document. It is one of the places where big philosophical questions play out about who should pay for what, the size and role of the federal government, and different approaches to debts, deficits, and surpluses. Increased spending in any one area requires more taxes, taking funding away from something else, or deficit spending (and adding on debt). Decreased spending requires difficult decisions about what programs or benefits get cut.

The Budget Process: Resolutions, Reconciliation, and Appropriations, Oh My!

The U.S. government runs on a fiscal year that starts on October 1 of the previous calendar year (so FY 2024 begins October 1, 2023). Our current budget framework is outlined in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

The U.S. House and Senate together hold the purse strings for the federal budget, but the executive branch has the first go at things. Here’s how the process works in a “typical” year.

The president develops a detailed budget request. This request is managed by the Office of Management and Budget and developed in concert with federal agencies, and is due to Congress on the first Monday in February prior to the start of the next fiscal year.

The Senate and the House of Representatives develop a joint congressional budget resolution that specifies overall tax and spending levels, providing a top-line budget number. The budget resolution can also include “reconciliation”—legislation that can address revenue or spending issues affecting the overall budget, including in ways that significantly change existing laws.

The House and Senate vote on the budget resolution. Note: Both the budget resolution and any reconciliation measures need only a simple majority vote in the Senate and aren’t subject to the vote-stalling technique known as a filibuster (which requires 60 votes to break). Reconciliation measures are sometimes used to pass controversial legislation that wouldn’t receive 60 Senate votes—including the Bush-era tax cuts, fixes for the Affordable Care Act, and the American Rescue Plan of 2021.

The budget resolution, once passed in both the House and the Senate, establishes overall discretionary funding for the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations; this is known as a 302(a) allocation. The main function of the Appropriations committees is to provide discretionary funding to government operations including federal agencies.

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees each parcel the funding out to twelve Appropriations subcommittees (each of which receives a 302(b) allocation). The House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees develop more detailed spending plans based on the allocations received.

Each of the subcommittees can pass a separate funding bill, but they are often passed as a single “omnibus” bill covering some or all of the 12 appropriations. The House and Senate must come to agreement on and pass identical versions of these funding bills. Unlike the original budget resolution, this requires a 60-vote majority in the Senate to avoid a filibuster. Any provisions in the bill(s) that would exceed the allotted budget are also subject to filibuster.

The House and Senate must pass the budget bill(s) and get them signed by the president (or override the president’s veto) by the time the fiscal year begins.


Subcommittees Funding Science

Several appropriations subcommittees deal with science-related agencies (for example, the defense budget funds a lot of science research). However, the three subcommittees that have the greatest science focus are likely Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (budgets for NOAA, NASA, the NSF, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, among others), Energy and Water Development (which includes the Department of Energy and its Office of Science), and Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies (which includes both USGS and EPA).

That’s the idea—in practice, it’s often a lot more complicated. For example, when FY 2014 started without an agreed-upon budget, the government shut down for 16 days. In mid-October, Congress passed a “continuing resolution” to allow the government to reopen using the previous year’s budget levels. The final omnibus budget wasn’t signed until January 2014, more than three months into the fiscal year.

As you can see, the politics of funding the U.S. government makes for a major challenge, requiring a lot of work, diplomacy, and give-and-take—far more than we can get into in a blog post. If you’d like to explore the topic further, a more thorough rundown on the budget is available in this AMS webinar recording: “The U.S. Federal Budget and Policy Process.” And don’t forget to follow the AMS Policy Program for more ways you can learn about—or get involved in—the policy process!

Helpful Resources

About the AMS Policy Program

The Policy Program promotes understanding and use of science and services relating to weather, water, and climate. Our goal is to help the nation, and the world, avoid risks and realize opportunities associated with the Earth system.