The AMS Education Program has been actively training teachers in the atmospheric, oceanic, and climatological sciences for 20 years. Over 16,000 teachers have taken part in its professional development program, DataStreme. In June, some of DataStreme-trained teachers attended a NOAA brown-bag seminar, where their presentations were seen by NOAA education officials.
The teachers—who hailed from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—are representatives from an AMS DataStreme Local Implementation Team (LIT). The LIT teams are run by a master teacher and local scientist. The setup provides training for teachers in a specific scientific field as well as helping them strategize ways to bring scientific information into the classroom. LIT team leader and DOE Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow John Moore was so inspired by the teachers’ hard work and creative applications of Earth Science to their classrooms that he orchestrated the brown-bag meeting to facilitate dialog between the NOAA funders and the end-result teachers.
The teachers described the positive impact of bringing real-world NOAA and NASA data into the classroom, using skills from AMS DataStreme courses. They shared how strategies developed in DataStreme Atmosphere, Ocean, and Earth’s Climate System programs could be creatively implemented in the classroom, such as introducing a climate-science section by reading a novel with a general environmental theme, or comparing “textbook” atmospheric data with real data provided by NOAA and NASA. Teachers lauded DataStreme for providing the relevance needed to keep their students excited about science and help develop them into better decision makers. Others thanked NOAA and NASA for the opportunity to bring free, real-world data into the classroom.
In addition to the live audience, the presentations were also Web cast to NOAA offices across the country. The Archived PowerPoint slides from their presentations can be accessed at http://www.lib.noaa.gov/about/news/brownbagseminars.html.
Rachel
Inside the AMS Annual Report
This past year was a busy one at AMS. Along with the usual activities, there were a slew of events and new projects in the works. While BAMS, the Web site, and The Front Page communicate what is happening within the Society, there is another not-so-obvious resource to find out what’s going on: the AMS Annual Report. For instance, did you know:
The total number of AMS members at the end of the year was 13,963, and the number of full members increased for the fifth year in a row.
The Policy Program developed a disaster risk reduction alliance with the Aerospace Medical Association, the leading professional society of military medical doctors in the U.S. and overseas, on the topics of climate and weather-scale impacts to human health.
5,366 people attended AMS conferences and symposia, compared to 4,235 the previous year, and a total of 4,233 papers were presented.
The conversion to a new Manuscript Tracking System significantly increased production capabilities in the Publications Department.
The fellowship and scholarship program celebrated its 20th year, which, since its inception, has awarded nearly $8.4 million to more than 900 students.
118 broadcast meteorologists earned the CBM Certificate, bringing the total number of active CBMs to 470.
The AMS book Eloquent Science and Weather on the Air received “Highly Recommended” ratings from CHOICE, a journal of current reviews for academic libraries published by the Association of Library and Research Libraries.
The entire 2010 Annual Report is available on the AMS website.
Emergency Response Technology Goes On Demand
When the American Red Cross responded the morning after the 24 May tornado outbreak in central Oklahoma, they had a new tool in their pocket. The Warning Decision Support System—Integrated Information (WDSS-II), developed by NOAA’s National Severe Storm Lab, cut disaster assessment time from 72 hours down to 24, a major improvement that could save many lives when it comes to rescue in the wake of a disaster.
The WDSS-II works by narrowing when and where the severe weather most likely occurred. Using radars, satellites, and other observation systems, the On Demand feature of the tool records tracks of rotation and hail swath images that can be opened in Google Earth. When street maps are overlaid with these images, disaster teams can assess which areas likely need assistance first, as well as the most accessible routes to take.
“They no longer have to put boots on the ground to visually assess the situation before planning how they will deploy response teams,” comments Kurt Hondl, NSSL research meteorologist. “It makes the coordination and planning of the American Red Cross’s response so much more efficient.”
The WDSS-II On Demand software is available to American Red Cross officers and other assessment organizations. More than 250 volunteers in Oklahoma and Texas have been trained so far by the Red Cross to utilize the NSSL On Demand software. Other organizations, like FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, have begun to take advantage of the technology as well.
New Tools for Predicting Tsunamis
The SWASH (Simulating Waves until at Shore) model sounds like something that would have been useful in predicting the tsunami in Japan. According to the developer Marcel Zijlema at Delft University of Technology, it quickly calculates how tall a wave is, how fast it’s moving, and how much energy it holds. Yet, Zijlema admits that unfortunately it wouldn’t have helped in this case. “The quake was 130 kilometers away, too close to the coast, and the wave was moving at 800 kilometers per hour. There was no way to help. But at a greater distance the system could literally save lives.”
SWASH is a development of the SWAN (Simulating Waves Near SHore), which has been around since 1993 and is used by over 1,000 institutions around the world. SWAN calculates wave heights and wave speeds generated by wind and can also analyze waves generated elsewhere by a distant storm. The program can be run on an ordinary computer and the software is free.
According to Zijlema, SWASH works differently than SWAN. Because the model directly simulates the ocean surface, film clips can be generated that help in explaining the underlying physics of currents near the shore and how waves break on shore. This makes the model not only an extremely valuable in an emergency, but also makes it possible to construct effective protection against a tsunami
Like SWAN, SWASH will be available as a public domain program.
Another tool recently developed by seismologists uses multiple seismographic readings from different locations to match earthquakes to the attributes of past tsunami-causing earthquakes. For instance, the algorithm looks for undersea quakes that rupture more slowly, last longer, and are less efficient at radiating energy. These tend to cause bigger ocean waves than fast-slipping subduction quakes that dissipate energy horizontally and deep underground.
The system, known as RTerg, sends an alert within four minutes of a match to NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center as well as the United States Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center. “We developed a system that, in real time, successfully identified the magnitude 7.8 2010 Sumatran earthquake as a rare and destructive tsunami earthquake,” says Andrew Newman, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Using this system, we could in the future warn local populations, thus minimizing the death toll from tsunamis.”
Newman and his team are working on ways to improve RTerg in order to add critical minutes between the time of the earthquake and warning. They’re also planning to rewrite the algorithm to broaden its use to all U.S. and international warning centers.
The Weather Museum Names Its 2010 Heroes
The John C. Freeman Weather Museum at the Weather Research Center in Houston, Texas, recently honored three weather heroes for outstanding service in 2010.
The Weather Hero Award is given to individuals or groups who have demonstrated heroic qualities in science or math education, volunteer efforts in the meteorological community, or assistance to others during a weather crisis. The 2010 Weather Heroes honored were the American Meteorological Society, KHOU-TV in Houston, and Kenneth Graham, meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS New Orleans/Baton Rouge office.
The AMS was recognized for developing and hosting WeatherFest for the past ten years. WeatherFest is the interactive science and weather fair at the Annual Meeting each year. It is designed to instill a love of math and science in children of all ages, encouraging careers in these and other science and engineering fields. AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter accepted the award on behalf of the Society. “While we are thrilled to display this award at AMS Headquarters,” he comments, “the real recipients are the hundreds of volunteers who have given so generously of their time and have made WeatherFest such a success over the past decade.”
KHOU-TV was honored for hosting Weather Day at the Houston Astros baseball field in fall of 2010. Weather Day was a unique educational field trip and learning opportunity that featured an interactive program about severe weather specific to the region. Over the course of the day, participants learned about hurricanes, thunderstorms, flooding, and weather safety—highlighted by video, experiments, trivia, and more.
Graham received the award for his support of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill cleanup. As meteorologist-in-charge of the New Orleans/Baton Rouge forecast office in Slidell, Louisiana, Graham started providing weather forecasts related to the disaster immediately following the nighttime explosion. NWS forecasters played a major role protecting the safety of everyone working to mitigate and clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The awards were presented at the center’s third Annual Groundhog Day Gala and its fifth annual Weather Hero Awards on 2 February 2011.
The Weather Research Center opened The John C. Freeman Weather Museum in 2006. As well as housing nine permanent exhibits, the museum also offers many exciting programs including weather camps, boy/girl scout badge classes, teacher workshops, birthday parties and weather labs.
Science Meets Art on Floor 2
Art is a method of communication, a dialogue between artist and audience. The exhibit “Forecast: Communicating Weather and Climate,” currently on display on the second floor of the convention center, is also about communication between artists and scientists. The collaborative exhibit paired up Washington State artists with forecasters, climatologists, and atmospheric scientists with the idea that looking at weather and climate through a different lens opens up a new viewpoint and ultimately greater understanding. The end result is not only interesting artwork but what turned out to be enlightening experiences for those involved. Here’s one of the two interviews with the artists and scientists up on Ametsoc YouTube:
If you haven’t already, stop by to view the photography, paintings, and sculptures that portray the weather in a way you may not have seen before.
For more from the scientists’ perspective, take a look at University of Washington science writer Vince Stricherz’s article.
WeatherFest Wows Seattle
More than 4,ooo people converged on the convention center yesterday for WeatherFest 2011. The tenth year of the interactive science and weather fair kicked off with a festive ribbon cutting.
Par for the course, kids were an eager and active presence, crowding the exhibits that featured games and hands-on demonstrations.
With almost sixty exhibits, the weather extravaganza provided numerous ways of finding fun in science education. More WeatherFest videos are posted on our Ametsoc YouTube channel.
It’s in the Bag
Grocery shoppers usually are prepared to answer just one question at the check out line: “paper or plastic?” In Iowa, though, if they choose paper, they can also answer questions like, “What do you do if you see a tornado?” because they’re likely looking right at the answer….on the sides of the bags filled with their purchases.
The severe weather tips printed on grocery bags are the work of the AMS Iowa State University chapter. It is one of the effective initiatives that recently earned them the AMS Student Chapter of the Year–they’ll be honored along with other 2011 AMS award winners at the upcoming AMS Annual Meeting in Seattle.
The students first provided tips advising what to do in the event of lightning, tornadoes, or flooding, in the Ames and Ankeny HyVee stores in April of last year. Chapter members came up with the idea two years ago as an easy way to increase community weather awareness. They teamed up with the Central Iowa Chapter of the NWA to create the bags and expanded the distribution through much of central Iowa, including the Des Moines metropolitan area.
The chapter plans to expand further this year, aiming to distribute these safety tips to all 220 plus HyVee stores throughout the Midwest, including in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Successful Launch for Rocket City Weather Fest
In October, the University of Alabama in Huntsville student chapter of AMS (UAHuntsville AMS) hosted its first Rocket City Weather Fest (RCWF), a free weather festival for the North Alabama community. For its debut year, the fest had close to 300 in attendance, as well as more than 50 exhibitors and presenters.
“Due to the variety of weather extremes experienced in the Tennessee Valley, one of the priorities of the UAHuntsville AMS is to educate the community about severe weather safety,” comments Sandy LaCorte, RCWF event coordinator and UAHuntsville AMS education outreach committee chair. “The event gave children and adults the opportunity to explore the atmospheric sciences through hands-on activities, demonstrations, and informative seminars, emphasizing safety and preparedness.”
At the Wacky World of Weather, kids learned about hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, and floods. Other activities included weather-themed movies in Sci-Quest’s Roaming Dome, a planetarium style inflatable theater, plus a weather miniature golf and beanbag toss. Attendees were also given the opportunity to see a weather balloon launched by the UAHuntsville atmospheric chemistry research group.
RCWF is the chapter’s newest endeavor in community outreach. Members, who are undergraduate and graduate students in pursuing careers in atmospheric and earth sciences, also speak at local schools, judge regional and state science fairs, administer tests for the Science Olympiad, and program weather radios at various events.
Getting Remote Data to Remote Regions
While Internet connections in more remote regions of the world have improved over the years, connectivity challenges still inhibit delivery of scientific data to people who need it. This past month the situation has gotten a little better, thanks to some international collaborations involving satellite data.
Often remote places are in developing countries that lack funding for the state-of-the-art connectivity necessary for scientific information. Back in 2003, in a BAMS essay, “The ‘Information Divide’ in the Climate Sciences,” Andrew Gettelman addressed the struggles of scientists in developing countries to keep up with the rest of the world in increasingly technology driven times. In visits to a number of countries around the world, Gettelman found slow or nonexistent internet access, outdated operating systems, and other hurdles limited the ability of these scientists to keep up with the literature and access data, among other problems.
The information divide is not unique to the atmospheric and related sciences. However, because of the unique role that timely information plays in forecasting, and the need for data for climate studies, the divide may be especially critical in these disciplines. Our science is global, affects people globally, and requires global information.
Five years later Michel Verstraete of the European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Environment and Sustainability (JRC-IES) still found limited internet access when participating in a field campaign in 2008 to study the environment around Kruger National Park in South Africa. JRC-IES and South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) joined forces to address the problem of accessing large satellite data files crucial in research related to sustainable development and other environmental studies. NASA became involved the following year, when the problem of electronic access became obvious during a workshop in South Africa on use of Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) data.
The solution: NASA recently shipped 30 TerraBytes of MISR data directly to a distribution center in Africa. CSIR will manage the center and offer free access to researchers in the region. Verstraete, along with members of the other agencies, plans to upgrade connectivity and encourage participants to share data. Verstraete says he hopes this collaboration will strengthen academic and research institutions in southern Africa.
Adds Bob Scholes, CSIR research group leader for ecosystem processes and dynamics at NASA,
The data transfer can be seen as a birthday present from NASA to the newly formed South African Space Agency. It will kick start a new generation of high-quality land surface products, with applications in climate chance and avoiding desertification.
Last month NASA also joined up with the U.S. Agency for International Development a new node for accessing satellite and other environmental information through the web-based SERVIR system. This time the local collaboration is with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. ICIMOD analyzes geophysical monitoring and predictive information and also can disseminate the information through its relationships with the region’s decision makers. Remote sensing is critical in monitoring sparsely populated, difficult-to-access mountainous areas of the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya region—which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar, and Pakistan. SERVIR addresses issues of land cover change, air quality, glacial melt, and adaptation to climate change and other crucial issues in the mountainous region.
As Gettelman concluded in his article:
Perhaps the most important recommendation is that, as we restructure the model of scientific communication in the information age, we ensure that it benefits the maximum number of people. The greatest gains in terms of lives saved and mitigation of the impacts of weather extremes and changes in the climate can most likely come from not just improving the state of knowledge but improving the access to existing knowledge and information by scientists, forecasters, and policy makers around the world.