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.”
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.
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.
Reflections on the 2024 AMS Science Policy Colloquium
By Jessica Stewart, MHA, MPH, student DrPH, The George Washington University
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. The Science Policy Colloquium is non-partisan and non-prescriptive, and promotes understanding of the policy process, not any particular viewpoint(s).
The 2024 AMS Science Policy Colloquium was a deeply enriching experience, offering valuable insights and fostering new connections. As a second-year doctoral student focusing on climate change adaptation and interest in integration of policy and governance, I found the colloquium’s session discussions to be both inspiring and pivotal for my research and professional growth.
Insights into Policymaking
The colloquium provided a detailed exploration of the policy-making process, which I’ll admit I did not fully understand at first. The sessions highlighted the crucial role of effectively communicating scientific findings, showing how this communication can significantly shape policies affecting our world. This realization drove home the impact and importance of my own dissertation research. Engaging with policymakers and federal officials gave me a real-world perspective on the complexities of policymaking and the collaborative efforts needed to enact meaningful changes. Networking with a diverse group of students, agency professionals, scientists, and industry leaders was invaluable. These interactions offered fresh perspectives on my research interests and opened doors for future collaborations.
Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into Policy
I was able to find a community of other students and agency professionals who were actively engaged in extreme heat research, and we started sharing ideas—a topic that is particularly significant to me as I thought about my home state of California. California has faced increasingly severe heatwaves and droughts, which have serious effects on public health, infrastructure, and ecosystems. These extreme weather events not only strain the healthcare system but also damage critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, and water systems. Additionally, they disrupt the balance of natural environments, leading to loss of biodiversity and increased risk of wildfires.
My research interests explore how new technologies, predictive modeling, and resilient infrastructure can be used to adapt to the escalating challenges of climate change. Making sure these technological solutions fit into policy frameworks is key to their success and long-term sustainability. Policies need to be effective and forward-thinking to accommodate emerging technologies and integrate scientific research into practical applications. This alignment ensures that innovations are not only developed but also effectively implemented, providing real-world benefits and enhancing the resilience of communities against the growing threats posed by climate change.
The dynamic discussions on science, technology and its far-reaching impacts were incredibly insightful. This is one of the many products of the colloquium, this vibrant exchange of ideas and solutions, showcasing a united commitment to tackling today’s challenges and preparing for a more resilient future.
Moving Forward
The AMS Science Policy Colloquium has profoundly deepened my understanding of the intersection between science and policy. The insights and connections I gained will significantly enhance my contributions to the field of science. It was an incredibly enriching experience, providing invaluable insights, professional connections, and strengthened my sense of purpose.
About the AMS Science Policy Colloquium
TheAMS Science Policy Colloquium is an intensive and non-partisan introduction to the United States federal policy process for scientists and practitioners. Participants meet with congressional staff, officials from the executive office of the President, and leaders from executive branch agencies. They learn first-hand about the interplay of policy, politics, and procedure through legislative exercises. Alumni of this career-shaping experience have gone on to serve in crucial roles for the nation and the scientific community including the highest levels of leadership in the National Weather Service, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), and AMS itself.
Join us August 5–6 in Washington, D.C., as we work to ensure a robust Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise
By Keith L. Seitter, AMS Senior Policy Fellow and Executive Director Emeritus
The AMS Summer Community Meeting (SCM) is a vital gathering for our community, and one that has played a significant role in shaping the success of the weather, water, and climate enterprise over the past two decades. If you’ve never been to one, it might not be clear why I say that, so as someone who’s attended these meetings from the start, let me explain why they have been so important — and why I am so excited about this year’s SCM.
The SCM was one component of the AMS response to recommendations in the 2003 National Research Council “Fair Weather” report. Many of us view this report as a turning point for the entire community. It acknowledged the serious tensions that existed at the time between the private and government sectors and offered concrete steps that could reduce those tensions and lead to more effective service to the nation. From the standpoint of AMS and its role in supporting the community, the following recommendation was particularly important:
“Recommendation 3. The NWS and relevant academic, state, and private organizations should seek a neutral host, such as the American Meteorological Society, to provide a periodic dedicated venue for the weather enterprise as a whole to discuss issues related to the public-private partnership.”
The full AMS response included establishment, in 2004, of the Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise, which later had its scope expanded as the Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise (CWWCE). For the past two decades, as one of several important programs within CWWCE, the SCM has played a pivotal role in improving the collaboration in the weather enterprise and helped greatly reduce tensions and conflict among key players in the community.
We are now two decades past the “Fair Weather” report, and the weather enterprise is very different from those earlier times, with many more players, data from commercial weather satellites, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, and many other innovations that are reshaping weather-related fields. These innovations bring the potential for our community to offer even greater service to the nation and the world — if the entire enterprise can work effectively together. So AMS, in 2023, launched a significant study to look at the weather enterprise 20 years after “Fair Weather.” Over 100 volunteers from throughout the enterprise have been participating in the study during this year, and they have identified a number of issues as preliminary findings in that effort.
The 2024 Summer Community Meeting will present some of those key findings as a launching point for extended discussions on foundational issues facing the weather enterprise, now and in the coming decades. That means that this year’s SCM brings the meeting back to its roots two decades ago, and promises to be one of the most influential in recent memory. Among the issues to be discussed are:
How can academic programs evolve to create the workforce needed for the Enterprise of today and the future?
How can the private, academic, government, and NGO sectors work together to produce the best possible numerical weather prediction platforms?
How is the explosion of AI impacting predictions and services?
What is the best balance between government observations and commercial data buys?
How is the research enterprise changing in the face of new technologies?
How do we ensure open science and open data in an enterprise where more observations are under the control of the private sector?
How do we ensure our warnings, decision support, and other services are taking best advantage of the strengths of each sector of the community?
The SCM has always provided a unique opportunity 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. At this year’s SCM, attendees will also contribute to the conclusions and recommendations presented in an important AMS study that could help shape the future of the weather enterprise. I encourage you to consider attending this year’s SCM, regardless of your role in the enterprise, so that you can be part of building our community’s future.
As with all AMS meetings, the SCM will be conducted as a hybrid meeting, so even those who cannot make the trip to Washington, D.C., in person can still take part virtually. Find out more and learn how to register.
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month. We asked a few members of the AMS community to give us their thoughts on pride, community, history, and the path forward. Sign up for the Coriolis Committee’s Ask Me Anything Zoom discussion about being LGTBQ+ in the Earth System Sciences (June 26, 2 p.m.) here.
This is part two of a two-part post. Read Part One to learn more about our contributors — Kandis Boyd, Mike Augustyniak, Jerrica Decker, Tevin Wooten, Declan Crowe, and Brad Colman — and their history with the AMS, LGBTQ+ community and advocacy, and coming out.
How have things changed for LGBTQ+ people in the field over the course of your career?
Brad: There have been dramatic changes, nothing short of remarkable and beyond my wildest dreams when I was growing up. I was just starting to recognize my own sexuality during the Stonewall Riots in 1969. We now have anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBTQ+ people in the workplace and society. Corporations have been strong agents of change with the adoption of inclusive and welcoming policies. One of the most dramatic changes I have observed, and personally feel is one of the most important, is the gain in visibility and representation of the LGBTQ+ community essentially everywhere one looks: politics, TV, academia, corporate, sports, and in many religions. As AMS president, I was proud to be able to bring my husband, Peter, to the annual meeting in Baltimore and introduce him to the AMS community. These dramatic changes have further enabled a number of supportive networks, like our own AMS BRAID and Coriolis.
Kandis: If you asked me 30 years ago what my career would look like, I would have told you a very different story than what I actually experienced. I’ve experienced more changes than I can count — and that is a good thing. Change is inevitable and the best way to embrace your career is to be prepared for change, embrace the unknown, and be a constant learner to build your skills and experience.
Declan: My professional career started just before the pandemic, and there have definitely been changes that I’ve seen since then. For example, people have been more willing to connect with others online, which has helped foster an inclusive space for those who may not encounter accepting spaces in their lives. Also, the pandemic spurred a huge amount of education about the LGBTQ+ community; it’s easier now than ever to take some time and educate yourself about the different parts of the community!
I’m proud of how far AMS and the weather, water, and climate enterprise has come from the time I’ve been involved. I’m also excited about where we can go to make sure we continue to create and support accepting spaces for everyone, both during this Pride month and in the future.
Mike: I am fortunate to have the support of all my friends and family, as well as (by and large) the community in which I have lived for the last 15+ years. My way of expressing gratitude for this good luck is to help others by being a resource and mentor, when possible. Others did it for me in the past, and now I feel a happy obligation to pay that forward.
What challenges still need to be addressed, both within and outside AMS?
Kandis: Speaking as a Queer Black Woman, intersectionality is a topic that needs much attention. Individuals who belong to multiple marginalized groups — such as people of color, 1st generation graduates, people with disabilities, people marginalized based on their gender or age, and immigrants — add complexity to the conversation and often face compounded discrimination issues related to their intersecting identities. … There are many places and spaces where LGBTQ+ individuals don’t have the same legal protections, are bullied and harassed, face health disparities, are victims of hate crimes, and as a result are at a higher risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide. AMS can be a beacon of light and be a voice to the voiceless for these all-important topics.
Mike: Figuring out who you are, and coming out if you wish, is a challenging but life-affirming experience for many, though some pay a heavy price for it. As the majority, members of the straight community need to be just as vocal and active in their efforts to improve the environment and rights of the members of the LGBTQ+ community, as LGBTQ+ members are. To quote Arthur Ashe: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Tevin: I feel that AMS should be more proactive and vocal in advocating for minority communities. I acknowledge that AMS is standing up for marginalized individuals, but we should be much better at also reaching early childhood and high school individuals, and not being solely a sector for working professionals. In order to change the environment, we must seed and water the foundation.
Declan: Historically, many people haven’t realized the fact that all minority communities face a collective struggle, and it is up to us to work together and fight for what is right. I encourage everyone, particularly within the AMS and other professional societies, to educate themselves on the dangers of ignoring intersectionality, as well as how to listen and amplify voices that have typically been suppressed.
Also, LGBTQ+ people face a huge issue when it comes to having their identities respected, especially our transgender/non-binary communities, who often go by names and pronouns that are not respected in professional spaces. Encouraging everyone, regardless of identity, to identify themselves with their pronouns will help normalize proper pronoun (and name) usage. Additionally, AMS at-large and its members can work to actively educate themselves on the different identities that fall within the LGBTQ+ community, so that they are ready to amplify the voices of community members.
Brad: There are still legal inequalities and workplace discrimination issues, as well as unique and critical healthcare disparities and intersectional challenges, where we still need to make considerable progress. One activity from my tenure as AMS president still stands out in my mind: the Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming, and Ally Event at the 2023 Annual Meeting in Denver. To listen to these brave individuals share their challenges and life journeys was both educational and inspirational to me.
Another area of remaining challenges has to do with global perspectives. We are by nature a global profession. Many of us travel abroad for conferences and field studies. Sadly, members of the LGBTQ+ community face difficult decisions about traveling to places where they may face violence, persecution, and legal sanctions. As such, efforts to promote global equality and human rights for LGBTQ+ individuals remain ongoing and vital.
What advice would you give other LGBTQ+ people in weather, water, and climate-related fields?
Jerrica: My advice is to be your authentic self because there are lots of people in the AMS who celebrate who you are, and be sure to look for Coriolis events at the annual meetings.
Kandis: First: befriend, network, support, and advocate for people both in and outside of the LGBTQ+ community.
Second, celebrate your identity and be your true, authentic self at all times.
Third: be visual and educate yourself about all things weather, water and climate – be an inspiration to others.
Declan: Find a community of LGBTQ+ people and allies wherever you can! It’s nearly impossible to deal with the struggles we face, both as individuals and a community. The good thing is, we don’t have to do it alone! Not every space will be accepting, but whenever you can, live your life to your truest form and find the people that are willing to do that alongside you.
Tevin: To other members of the LGBTQ+ people in the weather, water and climate community, I would say to remember why you’re in this field. Ultimately, it should be to protect vulnerable communities. That’s what matters most … let your expertise and experience be your guide.
Brad: First off, everyone should strive to be authentic and respect both yourself and others by embracing diversity. I recognize this is easy to say but not always easy in real life and I encourage anyone who is struggling with the process of coming out to set their own pace and to seek support if they ever feel it would be beneficial. Not everyone need share this information in their professional life, it is a personal decision. I recognize, however, that those who do so play an important role in supporting others either directly or indirectly. Finally, don’t forget that in the current environment, the large majority of our colleagues are supportive allies.
Mike: Having a support network – even if that’s just one other person – makes navigating all of life’s challenges easier. Invest in yourself by building your network!
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
Kandis: I thank AMS for leading the way to advance the LGBTQ topic for everyone. The Coriolis Committee is sponsoring a webinar to address many of these topics on June 26th – “Ask Me Anything.” I hope everyone takes the time to participate in this all-important topic
Jerrica: To me, pride is about providing a safe place for people to explore and be their authentic selves.
Brad: I’m incredibly excited by how far the LGBTQ+ community has come in the fight for equality and acceptance. While it’s crucial to stand up for our rights and be proud of who we are, it’s equally important to recognize that not everyone may be on the same journey or at the same stage of acceptance. Just as growing comfortable as a gay man was a decades-long journey for me, others in our community and beyond have their own journey and their own pace. We live in a wonderfully diverse world, filled with people from all walks of life, and it’s important that we respect that diversity. Let’s continue to be proud of who we are, [while being] mindful of the impact of our actions on others. Let’s strive to be inclusive, respectful, and supportive of one another, regardless of where we are on our individual journeys. Now, let’s celebrate Pride Month!
Featured image: “Iridescence” by Joshua Intini was an entry in the 2023 AMS Weather Band photo contest.
June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month. We asked a few members of the AMS community to give us their thoughts on pride, community, history, and the path forward. This is part one of a two-part post.
Our Contributors
Kandis Boyd
I’ve worked in the federal government since the age of 19 and will celebrate 30 years of continuous service in August 2024. I’ve held over a dozen positions ranging from meteorologist to hydrologist, program manager, subject matter expert, deputy director, and director. I’ve also held positions in the non-profit sector and academia. I have degrees in Public Administration, Meteorology, [and] Water Resources, and certifications in Project Management (PMP) and Logistics, Transportation and Distribution (CLTD). My pronouns are She/Her/Hers and I identify as Queer/PanSexual.
Mike Augustyniak
I’ve been a broadcast meteorologist for WCCO in Minneapolis since 2008, and am an AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist and Certified Consulting Meteorologist. I’ve also appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, CBS Evening News, CBS Mornings and the BBC. I received both my Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in atmospheric science from the University at Albany. I am the Outgoing Commissioner on Professional Affairs for AMS. I identify as a gay cis man.
Jerrica Decker
I was born and raised in northwest Ohio. I graduated from OSU with my bachelor of science in 2008 and earned my masters in meteorology from OSU in 2010. I have been a meteorological systems engineer for weatherUSA since 2012. My current work ranges from data management to processing data sources. I am male to female transgender.
Tevin Wooten
I’m currently a morning meteorologist at NBC Boston. I have degrees in broadcast journalism from the University of Arkansas and a meteorology major from Florida State University. Previously, I worked with The Weather Channel as an on-camera meteorologist. I identify as gay and use he/him/his pronouns.
Declan Crowe
I am a recent graduate of NC State University in Raleigh, NC, with degrees in both Meteorology and Spanish. I’m pursuing a path of Emergency Management, and will be attending Millersville University starting in Fall 2024 to earn an MS in Emergency Management. I’ve performed numerous types of research related to both winter weather and tropical meteorology; my work has been featured in the NASA IMPACTS project and at the National Hurricane Center. I identify as gay and genderfluid, and I use he/they pronouns.
Brad Colman
My background includes a nearly 40-year career as an atmospheric scientist in our public sector with NOAA (both in OAR and NWS) and then about a decade in the private sector, ending with Bayer and the Climate Corporation supporting global agriculture. Currently, I’m the 1st past president of the AMS and actively involved in a number of other boards and volunteer activities. I am a gay male with pronouns he/him. While it took a while for me to come to acknowledge it growing up in the 60s and 70s, I now know this was my identity from early childhood.
What has been your experience working on LGBTQ+ issues, or with LGBTQ+ organizations, within or outside AMS?
Tevin: I’m currently on the Culture and Inclusion Cabinet and the current chair of BRAID. The experience is rewarding but it’s also extremely taxing. We are attempting to rewrite several decades of injustice in the weather, water and climate enterprise. Our job is to now interpret and apply forecasts to marginalized communities that have been traditionally overlooked. In my work life, along with meteorology and forecasting, I report climate stories with an environmental justice lens.
Declan: I am currently the Chair of the AMS Coriolis Committee. I came into this role in January, after working with the Committee for a year before. I’ve been very happy to work with such a great group of people who are all dedicated to improving LGBTQ+ visibility and acceptance in AMS. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet a lot of LGBTQ+ community members and allies during my time with Coriolis, who have shared the joys and difficulties with me of being LGBTQ+ in the weather, water, and climate enterprise. These connections have served as motivation for me to continue to extend our outreach and promote acceptance of our community in all spaces.
Kandis: I have served on the Coriolis committee for several years and I have also worked with LGBTQ+ teams/committees in and outside of the workplace. As for my thoughts on the experience, it depended on the space: most LGBTQ+ experiences have been positive, but there is still much work to do because a large sector of our community opts to remain anonymous for safety reasons. The Coriolis group is a great group and I hope that their work will filter into all aspects of the AMS community — using pronouns, all gender bathrooms, and addressing workplace bullying and harassment. Yes, some meetings and events fail to be LGBTQ+-inclusive.
Brad: I have tried to be both supportive of, and be involved with, LGBTQ+ issues and groups in the AMS. It was one of a few personal priorities I set for myself moving into my role as president. We are very fortunate that the AMS has been very proactive in this area. We have the Culture and Inclusion Cabinet, BRAID, and Coriolis. In contrast to my concerns years ago about who might see me at a gay event, I am now both excited to be there and to see many allies from our broader AMS enterprise there as well. At our recent Annual Meeting in Baltimore, I was privileged to speak at the 15-year celebration of Coriolis. Seeing the huge turnout from AMS members of all ages impressed upon me the value of the steady work so many people in our community have done over the decades.
Jerrica: I am involved with AMS Coriolis and I am on the board for my hometown pride organization. I have done some work with advocacy.
When did you come out in your professional life? What made it easier/harder?
Brad: For me, coming out, especially professionally, was a decades-long process. Through graduate school and my early NOAA career, I only shared this private information with my closest and most trusted colleagues. As I became more comfortable being gay, I expanded my “in-the-know” community. This was challenging and tiring — Who had I told? Who knew via the grapevine? What was I risking by telling? Nonetheless, I was very fortunate and, my personal growth aside, I never felt I experienced discrimination. Eventually I was comfortable sharing this detail with colleagues and friends, and perhaps more importantly, I began to recognize that I might be helping others by sharing this aspect of my life with my professional community.
Kandis: I told myself that I would wait until I reached a certain level in my career before outing myself. I think that was the biggest mistake I made during my 30+ year career, because for so much of my life I led a dual life and constantly had to code-switch to assimilate. It is physically exhausting constantly reshaping your thoughts and actions to meet others’ expectations. So my advice to everyone is to show up and be your true authentic self from Day 1.
Mike: As for many, my coming-out process started in my personal life – family, friends, and eventually co-workers – and occurred over some months. During that process, I found it more challenging to tell long-term acquaintances my truth because, in my mind, I was asking them to readjust their understanding of who I was in a pretty major way, and with very little notice. While peoples’ reactions were almost universally positive and accepting, the process was still stressful for me. Consequently, at the age of 30, when I moved away from my hometown and first two jobs as a broadcaster, I decided to treat my new job and new city as a clean slate – starting from day 1 as “out.” This decision was absolutely the right one for me, and for my new home, where I can proudly represent the LGBTQ community in a very public and positive way.
Jerrica: I came out to my business partner in 2018, and he was very accepting.
Tevin: While I’ve always identified as queer, I came out mid-early career. This was strategic but also out of fear. Because my career is public facing, coming out has made it much easier to relate to viewers and my audience, and show that it’s okay to be my authentic self.
Declan: I’ve been lucky to have been out my entire professional life, but to varying levels depending on the situation. One of the things that has made being out easier has been surrounding myself with LGBTQ+ community members and allies who contribute to supportive and uplifting spaces. Obviously I’m not able to do this all the time, but when I do, I find that I am able to thrive both personally and professionally. In the same token, being around closed-minded individuals often makes it harder to express myself fully, particularly when these individuals have a lot of sway in my future career path.
What was it like finding your LGBTQ+ community, and why is that important?
Mike: AMS has provided a sense of belonging for me in multiple ways, an important one being the vibrant LGBTQ+ community within. For me, the chance social interactions that take place at AMS conferences and meetings have made the biggest impact. Realizing that an admired scientist has more in common with you than just your chosen field has been a very powerful thing. It *was* difficult to find my LGBTQ+ community in the early days of my career. Whether it was the era (early 2000s), my geographic location, my mindset – or, more likely, a combination of all these factors. I am grateful for those doing the work to expand and make the community more visible and welcoming. It has been my goal to be a small part of that change.
Tevin: I’ve had an overall positive experience. A lot of that is self-induced, because I try give off good energy, in hope that it returns. But I also try not to give attention to negativity.
Brad: Across many AMS programs and meetings I get to experience firsthand an active and engaged LGBTQ+ community that is the result of the hard work and commitment of many AMS members and staff over many years. Needless to say, they are a fun and welcoming group! Today’s experience contrasts sharply with my experience decades ago when there wasn’t a welcomed LGBTQ+ community. Any gatherings were done in secret and privately arranged. Early efforts to publicly organize were resisted.
Jerrica: In my experience it has been very easy to find LGBTQ+ community within the AMS and in central Ohio.
Declan: I’ve had many positive experiences where I’ve felt connected to the LGBTQ+ community within AMS. During the pandemic the Coriolis Reception was held on Zoom. Before I knew it, I felt like I was reconnecting with a bunch of old friends who understood the joys and difficulties of being part of the LGBTQ+ community. I’ve stayed in touch with many people I met in that Zoom call!
At times, it can be very difficult to find an LGBTQ+ community, particularly in smaller spaces where the focus is not on identities. Obviously, not every conversation needs to revolve around identities; however, I believe it would make it easier to find an LGBTQ+ community in every space if identities became a more common subject in weather, water, and climate spaces.
Join us next week for Part 2!
Featured image credit: Asker Ibne Firoz, “Rainbow over the city,” entry to 2023 Weather Band Photo Contest.
I grew up in a family that valued intellectual pursuits, discipline, and the importance of women’s education—and was provided the support to make sure I received that education despite external social and cultural barriers. In the 1930s, when my mother was young, such values were uncommon outside of her family. My mother was the first woman in our community in the town of Srinagar, Kashmir, to receive a college degree, back in the late 1930s. She was followed by her younger sisters, one of whom went on to become the principal of the women’s college in town. Thus, I grew up with the important privilege of having strong women as role models.
As I entered the atmospheric sciences, one of the women who embodied the undaunted courage and determination in that generation of path-breakers was Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first U.S. woman to obtain a doctorate in meteorology, which she earned from the University of Chicago in 1949. In 1989 she became the first female president of the AMS. She researched hot towers and hurricanes, and was the project lead of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) at NASA. While I never got a chance to meet Dr. Simpson, she was a beacon of inspiration.
I worked at the National Science Foundation under Dr. Rita Colwell—NSF’s first female director. An eminent biologist, she is recognized for her groundbreaking work on global infectious diseases such as cholera and their connection to climate. At an NSF holiday party during her directorship, I was astounded and inspired by the number of awards and honorary degrees on her office wall, from institutions all over the world! I admire her efforts in developing programs that support the advancement of women in academic science and engineering careers, such as NSF ADVANCE.
This Women’s History Month, as I reflect about women pioneers who inspired me, I thought I’d share with you a few important figures from my mother’s generation and before. Their contributions have indeed made our field a richer place.
June Bacon-Bercey (1928–2019)
When June Bacon-Bercey went to UCLA, her adviser told her she should consider studying home economics, not atmospheric science. Considering that she’d transferred to UCLA specifically for its meteorology degree program, she didn’t believe this was good advice. We’re all lucky she followed her heart.
Bacon-Bercey graduated from UCLA in 1954, the first African American woman to obtain a bachelor’s degree in meteorology there, and early in her career worked for what is now the National Weather Service as an analyst and forecaster. Later, as a senior advisor to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, she helped us understand nuclear fallout and how atomic and hydrogen bombs affected the atmosphere.
In 1972, she became the first on-air African American female meteorologist, working for WGR-TV in Buffalo, New York (and soon after, became the station’s chief meteorologist). That same year, she was the first woman and first Black American to be given the AMS Seal of Approval for excellence in broadcast meteorology. In 1975, she co-founded the AMS Board on Women and Minorities, now called the Board on Representation, Accessibility, Inclusion, and Diversity (BRAID).
June Bacon-Bercey. Image: AMS.
June Bacon-Bercey was a truly multifaceted scientist: over the course of her life, she was an engineer, a radar meteorologist, and a science reporter. She established a meteorology lab at Jackson State University, created a scholarship with the American Geophysical Union, earned a Master of Public Administration, and even served as a substitute math and science teacher well into her 80s. Not only did she achieve so much personally, but she was instrumental in making atmospheric sciences more accessible to minorities and to women.
I’m grateful to her for leaving all of us at AMS such a rich legacy, and hope you are too! Her determination and foresight benefit us all to this day.
Anna Mani (1918–2001)
Despite growing up in the same city where Anna Mani worked at the India Meteorological Department, I learned of her immense contributions to the field only recently. She followed her passion to study meteorology at a time when it was uncommon for women to pursue science. Although it went unseen by many, Mani’s work was instrumental (literally) in advancing meteorological research in India. Anna Mani once said, “Me being a woman had absolutely no bearing on what I chose to do with my life.”
Thwarted from studying medicine as a young woman, she developed a passion for physics, studied the properties of diamonds, and eventually earned a scholarship to study abroad, learning as much as she could about meteorological instruments. Returning to India just after the country’s independence, Mani played an important role in developing Indian-made weather and climate observing instruments, helping the country become more self-reliant. Her ozonesonde—the first developed in India—was created in 1964 and used by India’s Antarctic expeditions for decades; in the 1980s, these ozonesonde data helped corroborate the presence of the ozone hole in the Antarctic.
She eventually became deputy director-general of the India Meteorological Department. She also held multiple elected positions with the World Meteorological Organization related to instrumentation, radiation climatology, and more.
After (nominally) retiring in 1976, she spent the next few decades—almost till the end of her life—heading up a field research project unit assessing wind and solar energy resources. That work paved the way for many wind and solar farms across the country, advancing India’s leadership in renewable energy. How prescient her thinking was in terms of the need to move away from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources for the health of the environment!
Eunice Newton Foote (1819–1888)
By all counts, Eunice Foote was a remarkable woman. She was a dedicated women’s rights campaigner and suffragist, who attended the historic 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, helped publish its proceedings, and was among the first signatories on its Declaration of Sentiments.
In 1856 she was also the first person to demonstrate heat absorption by atmospheric gases and their potential climate impacts. Using a mercury thermometer inside glass cylinders, Foote found that the heating effect of the sun was greater in moist air than dry air, and highest of all for carbon dioxide. She even suggested that higher proportions of atmospheric CO2 could have caused warmer climates over the course of Earth’s history.
Yet the findings of a female amateur scientist—including the first non-astronomical physics paper published by an American woman—were ignored or dismissed by many at the time. Possibly unaware of Foote’s work, a few years later John Tyndall from Ireland wrote his seminal paper on the topic of atmospheric gases and solar radiation in 1861, and he was credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect.
That didn’t stop Foote, who would publish another physics paper and produce several patented inventions including a temperature-controlled stove. Though she spoke out about women being forced to file her patents under their husbands’ names for legal reasons, she still filed three under her own name, including rubber shoe-inserts and a paper-making machine. As a scientist, inventor, and women’s right campaigner, Eunice Foote was a trailblazer in the true sense of the word.
Women continue to break barriers!
Women, and especially women of color, still face barriers to equal participation and recognition within our fields. There are women whose names we *should* all recognize, but whose work has been buried, others whose ambitions may have been thwarted, or who are still struggling to be taken seriously. Whoever and wherever you may be, you can do your bit to help change that. By giving credit where it is due, we do right by each other and help make the meteorological ecosystem an attractive place to join, work, and collaborate in.
I would invite all of us to make a special effort to recognize the women we know who are making important contributions in Earth systems sciences—not just the ones who’ve already made a name for themselves, beating the odds. Mentor the early career scientists you know. Appreciate their talents and potential. Champion their careers. Consider nominating those you consider meritorious for AMS awards (including the Joanne Simpson Award and the June Bacon-Bercey Award!). If you’re part of the AMS community, consider following in the footsteps of June Bacon-Bercey by getting involved with BRAID’s efforts to make our field more welcoming for all who have a passion to be part it—including women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and those with disabilities. Or you might simply view and share this month’s AMS social media posts, celebrating women in our community. Happy Women’s History Month!
Anjuli is grateful to Katherine ‘Katie’ Pflaumer for providing useful edits as well as contributing material.
Anjuli Bamzai took up the position of AMS President January 28, 2024, at the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society. In her day job, she is a Senior Science Advisor on Global Climate Change in the Directorate for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF). She has also worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Atmospheric and Oceanic Research and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Dr. Bamzai has served as an Embassy Science Fellow in Seoul, South Korea, and Cairo, Egypt; as the U.S. Government reviewer for the IPCC AR4; and on the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee for the third National Climate Assessment. Among other degrees, she has earned PhDs from George Mason University and the Indian Institute of Technology. Read her bio here.
We spoke with our new AMS President about her history, influences, and what to expect at next year’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans!
You have a physics/math background; what drew you to the applied/atmospheric sciences?
In 1927, my maternal grandfather received a scholarship from the then Maharaja of Kashmir to study civil engineering at Harvard University. He was inducted to Tau Beta Pi in 1929. He returned to Kashmir, and rose to be the chief engineer of the state—quite an influential person in his own right in terms of planning and building the infrastructure in the region in the 1930s–50s. Growing up, he was a big influence in our lives in terms of discipline, rigor and the value of education. He actively encouraged his daughters, and later his granddaughters, to pursue higher education. As I entered college, meteorology was not uppermost on my mind; I was fascinated by physics, although of course, meteorology could be considered as physics applied to the atmosphere, ocean, and other Earth System components. All along I was interested in the environment, particularly the upper atmosphere; in the 1980s and 90s ozone stratospheric chemistry received huge attention. The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1989 and decades later, we are reaping the benefits and witnessing the healing of the ozone layer.
As for weather-related childhood experiences, in 1961 when I was in elementary school there was disastrous flooding in the city of Pune, which was close to the town we lived in. Incessant rains for a couple of weeks caused the Panshet dam to burst due to a breach in the construction of its wall; waters fed into Khadakwasla dam that breached as well.
I remember that day vividly. They let us out of school early; they said the dam had burst and there was flooding. We thought we’d go back home and find our homes just gone. Turned out Khadakwasla where I lived was on higher ground. We could see the breach in the second dam and red, muddy waters of those floods … moving toward the city of Pune and its hapless residents who were caught completely off guard. We had no school for several weeks. A lot of people in Pune faced a lack of drinking water, most of the bridges were destroyed. Several decades later, on my first day at NSF, I met the program director in Hydrological Sciences, Doug James. When he learnt I had lived in Pune, he asked me about the floods. I discovered he had actually come to Pune to study this rainfall event with colleagues at the Central Water Research Institute. It was an outlier event not just in my memory, but for the city and researchers across the globe like Doug!
You often talk about the value of inclusivity in the weather-water-climate enterprise. What are some of the challenges we face in that respect, and how can AMS help?
It’s about creating a welcoming and nurturing space for people who want to participate but may otherwise be facing challenges, be they lack of opportunity thus far, inherent biases in our system and/or individual biases. The aspirational goal is to make our field more attractive so we tap into the talent that is out there. The onus is on each of us to make it attractive, to share our experiences and achievements as well as disappointments.
People make career choices about what direction to take. How do we make the whole weather-water-climate professional ecosystem an attractive proposition to them? First of all I think the atmospheric and related sciences is in itself so interesting. It goes all the way from ivory tower to use-inspired, to application, to services, to tech development … We need exit ramps for people to leave and come back again. Increasing diversity is not only about gender diversity, important as that is. There are so many divides, e.g., rural-urban, socio-economic, minority and underrepresented groups. How do we ensure pathways to fuller participation? There’s also tension between foreign talent and the neglect in nurturing talent within this country. For example, we’re finding that smaller institutions, minority-serving institutions, smaller HBCUs oftentimes don’t have the infrastructure or ready access to federal resources. We had interesting sessions on the topic of broadening participation of the weather, water and climate enterprise at the 104th AMS Annual Meeting at Baltimore.
I want to understand and learn from the DEI assessment that AMS is undertaking. We have to be mindful that each of us is coming in with our own set of experiences. It’s challenging, but I believe that we need to keep striving doggedly with perseverance to create opportunities everywhere, innovation anywhere.
Who are some people who’ve influenced you and your leadership style?
We stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. People I admired like Drs. Joanne Simpson and Rita Colwell. They had the grit and determination to keep paving the way, just like the Honorable Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg! They are right there at the top for early-career women to read about and draw inspiration from. Dr. Colwell was the first female Director of NSF. Last year, I was thrilled to receive an email of congratulations from her when I became President-Elect of the AMS. She recently authored the book, A Lab of One’s Own: One Woman’s Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science. Prof. Jim Fleming has written the book, First Woman: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere; it describes the life of Dr. Joanne Simpson and the challenges she overcame to achieve spectacular heights, pun intended!
When I came to the United States I was fortunate to train/work with Dr. Jagadish Shukla and his group at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies. Dr. Shukla’s adviser at MIT was Dr. Jule Charney, his advisor was Dr. Carl-Gustaf Rossby. As I look back, it was amazing how I benefited from interacting with the top-notch scientists in our field like Dr. Suki Manabe, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics a few years back with two other climate scientists. I had the good fortune that my life intersected with such amazing people.
When I joined the government, I had the opportunity to work with some of the best, who were really visionary. For example, Jay Fein, who passed away in 2016, set up some very big, ambitious projects like the Community Earth System Modeling project at NCAR. Ari Patrinos at DOE, Bob Correll at NSF, and Mike Hall at NOAA. I learnt something from each of these larger-than-life people in our field. I know it’s not all about luck, but having said that, I have been fortunate that I did meet some of the greatest.
In India, my first advisor was kind of a renaissance person as well. He taught me to think big and bold, to seize opportunities from the world but also give back to society when the opportune moment arrives. To be strong about your convictions and proud of your achievements while at the same time being humble. I guess that was the culture that I came from. Certainly one should be assertive and one should speak candidly, while at the same time be open to learn and correct based on feedback. I think that if you let the arrogant side of your nature overcome you, then you’re going to stop learning, you’re going to stop keeping an open mind.
What are some of your priorities for your term as president, and for the AMS as a whole?
At AMS, we all come together as a Society because of a common kinship. For me, sustaining and enhancing a sense of camaraderie and networking amongst the various constituencies is a priority. Within and between the silos of science, practice, or services, there needs to be a lateral sharing of experiences through meetings and/or other events, through our publications. I would want to continue to enhance this so it results in a rich ecosystem which is attractive for the next generation.
The AMS has certain expertise to offer society, and we need to capitalize on the strengths of the AMS for society at large. How do we propagate that value chain through the various jigsaw pieces of an enterprise that is so large, and how do you put the puzzle pieces together so it yields successful outcomes?
The AMS community draws its historical lineage from the atmospheric and related sciences. However, we now know that the atmosphere is just one very important component of the Earth system, interacting with the ocean, the land, ecosystems, geology, and human systems. Understanding and responding to the system on a host of spatial and temporal scales is the grand challenge of our times. That’s the theme of the 2025 AMS Annual meeting in New Orleans. My theme is entitled, “Toward a Thriving Planet: Charting the Course Across Scales.” So local, regional, and global scales, from the weather/hydrology to climate. The state of Louisiana and the Gulf region are confronting problems such as loss of wetlands … so hopefully we will consider those issues a bit, engaging with the local community.
I know it sometimes feels like unprecedented climate and environmental changes have already descended upon us and it is a hopeless situation. I think we still have to steady ourselves and think objectively about, what can we do best, and how can we contribute with our expertise, our talent pool and resources at hand. We can’t wish these problems away, neither will they be resolved right away. We need innovation, creative thinking, and sound solutions.
For Peer Review Week 2023, AMS and other scholarly publishers have been asked to reflect on both the essential role that peer review plays in scholarly communication, and also “the future of peer review.” In this second of our two Peer Review Week posts, we’ll take a look at how all stakeholders in AMS publications can contribute to discussions about evolving AMS peer review–and where those discussions might take place.
An evolving practice
In support of its Mission to advance science for the benefit of society, AMS publishes 12 peer-reviewed, highly regarded scientific journals. That high regard is the result of deep commitment over many decades from AMS’s volunteer leadership and from thousands of volunteer Editors and reviewers across the disciplines AMS represents.
Researchers will take part in peer review throughout their career—sometimes as an author, sometimes playing the role of reviewer. Some will take on a journal editor role as well, with the responsibility of facilitating the review process and determining the ultimate fate of manuscripts.
Peer review is a human endeavor, and is thus subject to human failings. Individual and systemic biases, along with global economic and social inequities, impact who has access to both the process and the results of peer review. But as with all human endeavors, its users can re-shape peer review to better serve its purposes.
As firsthand users of the tool that is peer review, researchers are the first to point out that peer review is not perfect, and the first to note where change is needed to better serve the scientific community.
At another level, disciplinary communities—such as those convened by AMS through its scientific meetings and journals—set ethical standards and best practices that reflect the communities’ values and expectations. The peer review process can and does change as those needs and values evolve.
Peer review at AMS
For AMS, this ongoing “review of peer review” is centered in the work of the Publications Commission. Every AMS Chief Editor and the Chair of the BAMS Editorial Board is on the Commission, bringing constructive and insightful feedback from their editors, authors, reviewers, and readers to the Commission’s deliberations. The Commission sets best practices for editors, authors, and reviewers to follow, makes recommendations to AMS staff on improving processes and platforms, and provides policy and strategic recommendations to the AMS Council.
In recent years, a particular focus for the Commission has been how to integrate AMS’s overall commitment to equity, inclusion, and justice into the publications endeavor. The Commission summarized its thinking so far in a recent editorial published in all the journals: “Equity, Inclusion, and Justice: An Opportunity for Action for AMS Publications Stakeholders.” As noted in the editorial, the Commission will be looking closely at results from AMS’s organization-wide Equity Assessment (currently underway), which will likely inform how AMS peer review evolves.
As always, peer review at AMS will be shaped by the commitment and needs of researchers themselves, and also by scrutiny and constructive critiques from those who rely on the results—and who need the scientific endeavor to continue serving society into the future.
Have thoughts of your own on the future of peer review? Want to know more about peer review at AMS? Want to know how to volunteer to be considered as a reviewer or editor? Find out more or email us at [email protected]. We’ll be happy to hear from you!