Columnists

Some Take-Home Messages from Seattle

by Peggy Lemone, AMS Past-President
Unpacking from my trip to Seattle, I mulled over the many ideas about communicating weather and climate gleaned from planning, the formal program, smaller meetings, and hallway and dinner conversations.  Below is but a partial list:  I would be interested in hearing what others think.
The first idea originated well before the meeting, when Raj Pandya, Steve Ackerman, and I were brainstorming about the Presidential Forum.  After we settled on a panel discussion on communicating with the public, we decided that we needed to include weather as well as climate to provide synergy between the two, to provide a fresh twist, and to transcend the negativity sometimes associated with communicating about climate.
What I saw at the meeting suggested that was the right thing to do.  Talking about “climate” alone has too often divided Americans, while talking about weather sets us at ease, and experiencing a severe storm or blizzard unites us.  Besides, it is not clear to me at least where one draws the line between weather and climate.  I suspect, as we learn more, we will be talking more and more about the changes that are taking place from year to year using terms that we didn’t even know thirty years ago – like El Nino and La Nina, Arctic Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and so on.  “Climate change” discussion will be richer with the inclusion of these phenomena.
Communication about polarizing subjects requires trust, which can emerge from long-term engagement.  As we learned from the Presidential Forum, people in the media not only bring us weather forecasts but also educate us about these new weather phenomena and new types of data like Doppler radar reflectivity.  People turn to their weather broadcaster for information not only about weather but also science.  Many weather broadcasters, like Tom Skilling, solicit questions from the public.  We feel more comfortable hearing difficult messages from these people, because we have a long relationship with them.  (However, as one of the panelists, Claire Martin noted, the media could do a much better job).
The importance of trust was reinforced in a small meeting on data-stewardship issues.  A colleague looked at us and said – “I see you all have wedding rings.  Anyone who has been married a long time realizes there will be disagreements, but you can handle them if you remember what you have in common.”  One of the newspaper advice columns said exactly the same thing.  If you have something difficult to talk about, start by reminding yourself about shared values before diving in.  If it gets too hard, then go back to those shared values before trying again.  A similar approach might work with other relatives and friends:  allowing a dialog that includes common values rather than giving a lecture on the science.
Ralph Cicerone’s talk on Thursday reminded us of two more important points related to developing trust.  First, we should work to the best of our ability to earn our trust as a scientific profession.  This means working hard to keep the peer review process robust, not only by selecting good editors and reviewers, but also by ensuring that data used in publications are available to check conclusions.
And secondly, we need to make ourselves available to help the public understand our science (and science in general) better.   Part of this is by making ourselves available to the local TV weather broadcasters, as suggested in Monday’s presidential Forum, and making ourselves available in other ways, such as giving talks to schools , civic groups, museums, and participating in scouting groups, etc. Cicerone quoted statistics that suggested that people respected scientists, but few actually knew any scientist, save perhaps their physician.  Building familiarity will allow better communication.
A third idea comes from a comment heard in the meeting of the Committee on Climate-Change Communication.  Amidst our struggling to figure out how to do this, someone said that we shouldn’t think of people as being only in two camps – to use polite terms1 – the “convinced” and the “unconvinced,” but rather we should allow people to have a spectrum of positions.  To illustrate the “either-you’re-with-us-or-against-us” attitude, a colleague at lunch complained that the “convinced” group pigeonholed him in the “denier” slot (o.k., this is a polarizing term, but this is a quote reflecting his feelings), simply because he wasn’t convinced about claims of a relationship of stronger tropical cyclones to a warmer climate.  About a year ago, I exchanged emails with a well-known colleague who in the press was described as an ally by those who deny climate change simply because of some rather benign – and useful – comments on a blog.  Upon being contacted, this person told me she was fully convinced of the importance of greenhouse gases in warming the planet.
Other conversations reinforced what we already know:  that there are those out there who don’t want to have a conversation, but simply want to attack.  This rarely happens with weather, but it certainly happens with climate.   To reflect on Cicerone’s comments again, we needn’t “pander” to them but we do need to maintain our scientific integrity and to be approachable to those desiring a conversation rather than an argument.
Looking back on this essay, I realize that all the points are closely related:  that we will do better about communicating about difficult topics if we develop familiarity and trust.  We can perhaps do this by having a conversation that allows common ideas and values to emerge.   But the chances for such a conversation increases when – either through common experience or shared values – we obtain a degree of familiarity and trust.
[1These terms were proposed by Anderegg, W. R. L., J. W. Prall, J. Harold, S. H. Schneider, 2010: Expert credibility in climate change.  CMOS Bulletin SCMO, 38, 179–183.  Thanks to Keith Seitter for pointing this out.]

A Sustainable Investment in Sustainability

by William Hooke, AMS Policy Program Director, from the AMS project, Living on the Real World
Early in the AMS annual meeting this past week, I happened to run into Tim Killeen, the NSF Assistant Director for Geosciences. He barely said hello before asking me, “Bill, have you heard about SEES?”
I hesitated, and we both agreed I’d flunked his test. “SEES,” he went on, “stands for Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability.” He added, “This investment area spans all the NSF directorates, and will amount to about ten percent of our budget. It ought to be the topic of conversation here at the Annual Meeting, and yet there’s virtually nothing about it anywhere in the conferences and the sessions.”
!!!! Ten percent of NSF’s annual budget – some $7B/year – is real money.
Thankfully, Tim graciously went on to let AMS and me off the hook. “We could have done more to publicize this at the NSF,” he said. “But please let people know about the dear colleague letter which is still on our NSF website.”
The letter merits careful reading in its entirety, but here’s an excerpt:
“The SEES Portfolio will support research and education projects that span all eleven NSF Directorates and Offices, including:

  • research at the energy-environment-society nexus
  • novel energy production, harvesting, storage, transmission, and distribution technologies, and their intelligent control that minimizes environmental impact and corresponding adoption, socioeconomic, and policy issues
  • innovative computational science and engineering methods and systems for monitoring, understanding and optimizing life-cycle energy costs and carbon footprints of natural, social and built systems (including IT systems themselves)
  • data analysis, modeling, simulation, visualization, and intelligent decision-making facilitated by advanced computation to understand impacts of climate change and to analyze mitigation strategies
  • study of societal factors such as vulnerability and resilience, and sensitivity to regional change
  • short and long term research enabled by a new generation of experimental and observational networks
  • support for interdisciplinary education/learning science research, development, and professional capacity-building related to sustainability science and engineering
  • creation of research and education partnerships around forefront developments in sustainability science and engineering, both nationally and internationally
  • development of the workforce required to understand the complexities of environmental, energy, and societal sustainability
  • engaging the public to understand issues in sustainability and energy
  • development of the cyberinfrastructure and research instrumentation needed to enable sustainability science and engineering
  • support of the physical, cyber, and human infrastructure necessary to achieve SEES goals”

Probably you’d agree that it would be harder to prove that your work, whatever it is, doesn’t fit under this umbrella, than that it does. And that said, it’s quite probable that many of you have already responded to requests-for-proposals under these auspices. [In fact, that may well be true of the American Meteorological Society also; in my conversation with Tim, I just wasn’t quite quick enough to connect the dots.…]
We can make a forecast. This articulation of a sustainability investment area won’t prove to be a one-off. More likely, it signals the start, or next step, in a series, doesn’t it? Increasingly, as society grows more concerned about the Earth as resource, victim, and threat, we’re going to see further calls for research proposals in these areas and along these lines. We can and should thank Tim and other NSF leadership for their vision here.

At Least It's a Start: Coordinating Federal Climate and Health Programs

by Skyler Goldman, Florida Institute of Technology, Student Correspondent
The Interagency Crosscutting Group on Climate Change and Human Health (CCHHG) is the US Global Change Research Program’s effort to focus and coordinate wide-ranging, climate-relevant federal efforts in environmental health. As I learned during the Town Hall Meeting on Monday, 24 January, CCHHG is trying to prepare the public for climate change by aiming “to build communities that are healthy and resilient to climate change impacts.” The purpose of the meeting, however, was to determine what AMS Annual Meeting attendees thought were important topics for CCHHG to address.
Interestingly enough, the first suggestion came from a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who said that “funding does not allow for [this kind of] interdisciplinary work.” The rest of the audience seemed to agree. It seems that there is either money available for climatology work, or money available for health work. Put the two together, however, and little funding is available.
John Balbus of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was quick to say that interdisciplinary collaboration is one of the first goals of the CCHHG, and hopefully funding will come soon as a result of the group’s work.
Another attendee wondered if the CCHHG can achieve its goals. “Existence of this group is reason to be hopeful,” Juli Trtanj, the coordinator of NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative, said. “We now have an opportunity to be forward-looking, [but there’s] a lot of work to be done to make it happen.”
The simple creation of the CCHHG doesn’t seem like a lot of reason to be hopeful in bridging the gap between climate changes and the public, yet it is a start—maybe even a start along a path to potentially making a big difference. Perhaps the larger goal of creating those healthy and resilient communities can one day be realized.
“If we don’t do a better job of bringing the topic to the public,” Trtanj added, “we’re never going to get there. We’ll be here ten years from now going through the same thing.”

Raj: "I think we learned something, Steve!"

Raj Pandya and Steve Ackerman, co-chairs of the AMS Annual Meeting this week in Seattle, wrapped up their show with Episodes 4 and 5, now up on YouTube. Raj and Steve took their production team and throngs of groupies into the Exhibit Hall in search of tips on communicating from those master communicators, the people who represent the products meteorologists invent and use:

The next day our intrepid co-chairs finally had a moment to themselves and opportunity to get to know a little bit about each other’s day jobs via the standard professional communique-in-a-nutshell…the elevator talk:

Making the Public Aware of the Science

by Skyler Goldman, Florida Institute of Technology, Student Contributor
I sometimes feel like the whole purpose—or at least the effective application—of meteorology depends on being able to communicate to people who are not as knowledgeable in our subject.  And yet the difficulty of this task is overwhelming. This was acknowledged from the outset at the Presidential Forum on Monday.
“We don’t serve you, the scientists, very well, and I want to change that,” Claire Martin, the chief meteorologist of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said of the communication between scientists and the public.  It’s an important statement, and one that seemed to be agreed upon by the rest of the panel.
“Scientists live and die by how their work is represented,” Tom Skilling of WGN Chicago said, adding that if they are not represented well, then they have no interest in communicating with the broadcast meteorologists and other meteorologists who communicate with the general public.  It’s an issue facing our entire field, especially with important climate change topics knocking on the door.
It’s a simple concept: if the scientists who are doing the work of studying our changing climate are not getting the credit they deserve nor getting their entire story out there accurately, then they could lose interest in dealing with those responsible for communicating the science.  In a society of three-minute weather broadcasts and one-page weather reports, it’s a delicate balance between telling the whole story and leaving something out.  Someone—either scientists or journalists—is not going to get their way.  So how does our field get around it?
An audience member threw out an interesting point.  If the public is paying for the research, then shouldn’t they be able to read the work in a language they understand?  This scientist cited a paper he wrote in “regular” English as opposed to “scientific” English, and said that it was instantly rejected by the editor for sounding too “unintelligent.” This scientist suggested that journals publish two versions of every paper, one for the scientific community and one for the general public.
The idea is somewhat revolutionary, and it was denounced by another scientist who claimed that he wasn’t sure that the public would even “care about his work.”  Why go through the trouble?
But shouldn’t the public get to decide what they care about?  I think those of us in the sciences tend to overlook just how intelligent the public can be.  Making more scientific work available to the public in plain language would increase awareness.  Then, of course, the public would need to have access to such articles.  Unless you’re in college or working in the field, you’re probably not even aware that these journal articles exist, let alone have a subscription.  It’s not like you can browse meteorology journals at Barnes and Noble or Borders.  Access to science should not be limited by a caste system based on wealth or education.  It should be available to all so the public can make their own decisions. Perhaps the public would be better prepared for weather and climate if they could form their own opinions.
Tom Skilling said that we as meteorologists “haven’t done a good job of preparing the public [for climate change].”  Martin Storksdieck added that we “have done a poor job of telling not only what we can do, but what we can’t.”  Perhaps the scientists wouldn’t be misrepresented if the general public could read their work.  Maybe we don’t have to re-write articles as the one scientist suggested, but it would be a start.  Sure it requires more work, but whoever said communicating was easy?

Nationwide Network of Networks–Now Is the Time for Your Input

by George Frederick, Chair, AMS Ad Hoc Committee on Network of Networks
Today’s Town Hall (WSCC 606, 12:15-1:15 pm) on the Nationwide Network of Networks (NNoN) coincides with the availability of a draft report by our committee, available online for comment and review.
The report is a result of the AMS’s intensive response to the 2009 National Research Council (NRC) report entitled, Observing the Weather and Climate FROM THE GROUND UP A Nationwide Network of Networks. It summarized the work of a committee of the NRC’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate charged with developing “…an overarching vision for an integrated, flexible, adaptive, and multi-purpose mesoscale meteorological observation network….”  In “… identifying specific steps…that meet(s) multiple national needs…” the committee was given five guidelines:

  • Characterize the current state of mesoscale observations and purposes;
  • Compare the US mesoscale atmospheric observing system to other observing system benchmarks
  • Describe desirable attributes of an integrated national mesoscale observing system;
  • Identify steps to enhance and extend mesoscale meteorological observing capabilities so they meet multiple national needs; and
  • Recommend practical steps to transform and modernize current, limited mesoscale meteorological observing capabilities to better meet the needs of a broad range of users and improve cost effectiveness.

The committee focused on the planetary boundary layer extending from 2 meters below the surface to 2-3 kilometers above in the United States, including coastal zones.  Forecast time scales ranged up to 48 hours.  It considered the roles of federal, state and local governments as well as the private sector.  The goal was to guide development of “an integrated, multipurpose national mesoscale observation network.”



In reaction to the NRC report the AMS formed an ad hoc committee under its Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise to address the report’s recommendations and provide venues for community discussion and response.  The committee launched its effort at the AMS Community Meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, in August 2009.  Subsequently, six working groups have been busy addressing the recommendations in the NRC report.
The committee shares the vision of the NRC study, in which, ultimately, a “central authority” is required for the success of any nationwide network of networks. Traditional public-private-academic relationships will need to adjust to this new way of doing business—this will be a challenge for the entire community.
Other key recommendations include

  • A stakeholder’s summit should be convened at an early date to foment the NNoN initiative and continue the momentum achieved to date.  Implementation plans should be a follow-on result of this summit.
  • As funding for a NNoN will be a challenge, an implementation strategy should be developed that prioritizes systems based on their economic benefits; e.g., it was evident that systems to improve observations of the earth’s boundary layer would benefit multiple users (wind energy, aviation, forecasting onset of convective activity) and should be given a high priority.
  • Ongoing R&D and treating all networks (new and old) as perennial testbeds will be essential to success in constantly assessing and improving the member networks of the NNoN and developing new and innovative methods for observing earth’s boundary layer.
  • That the NNoN adopt the Unidata Local Data Manager to provide the communications backbone for the NNoN.
  • Metadata will be mandatory for applying data from the NNoN, and a combination of ISO 19115-2 and SensorML is recommended for the NNoN’s adopted metadata standards. Minimal and recommended sets of metadata elements should be adopted and well documented by the NNoN
  • The human dimension must be considered when developing the NNoN and is key to engaging stakeholders and network operators as the market is developed.  User assessments and education will be key parts of this effort.

State of the Union STEMwinder

by William Hooke, Director, AMS Policy Program, from the AMS project, Living on the Real World
Stemwinder? An old-fashioned mechanical watch needing winding. Now there’s a word that probably will disappear from the vocabulary in a few more years! Dictionary.com tells us that it’s also old slang for “a rousing speech, especially a stirring political address.”
But STEM itself is an acronym that will be with us for a while. It refers to Science-, Technology-, Engineering-, and Mathematics education.
President Obama’s speech last night called all this to mind. Partisans found much in his talk to like. And one area of emphasis was STEM education. An excerpt:

Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America’s success. But if we want to win the future – if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas – then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.

Think about it. Over the next ten years, nearly half of all new jobs will require education that goes beyond a high school degree. And yet, as many as a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school. The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to 9th in the proportion of young people with a college degree.(Emphasis added). And so the question is whether all of us – as citizens, and as parents – are willing to do what’s necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.

That responsibility begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and communities. It’s family that first instills the love of learning in a child. Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair; that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and discipline.

Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many schools don’t meet this test. That’s why instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To all fifty states, we said, “If you show us the most innovative plans to improve teacher quality and student achievement, we’ll show you the money.”

There’s more to the president’s speech, but this gives the flavor. He is right to emphasize education. Most of us want to see American values maintained, advanced, and extended throughout the remainder of this century. If we were the most populous country in the world, perhaps we could tolerate a mediocre educational system and achieve such aims through sheer force of numbers. But given that we add up to no more than a few percent of the world’s people, we must ensure that our science and engineering are cutting edge. We must create and innovate. And for the world’s sake, the best of our accomplishments should contribute to sustainable development – new energy technologies; better understanding of Earth processes; greater use of renewable resources; knowing how to protect the environment and ecosystems.
Even were we the best in this arena there would be no cause for complacency. But lagging behind other countries with respect not just to STEM education but also attainment of college degrees? This is truly alarming. Such decline in educational standing is probably the most reliable leading indicator that future U.S. fortunes and U.S. standing in the world will decline in years ahead. A November post on Living on the Real World describes how an emphasis on Earth science in public education would help reverse this threat.
Here the American Meteorological Society can hold its head high. For decades Society staff (led initially by Ira Geer, and now by Jim Brey), and a vast and committed network of teacher-collaborators across the country have made Earth science accessible to American public-school students. This week at the Annual Meeting the 20th Symposium on Education was causing a lot of hallway buzz. Participants were finding the sessions especially lively and energizing. Are you one of their number? Are you working at one of the federal agencies – NSF, NOAA, NASA, the Navy, and others – who have supported this work? You should take special satisfaction in your contributions to world well-being.
Others of you should be pleased at this recognition for your efforts as well. James R. Mahoney (Chair), Martin Storksdieck (Director), and others standing up the new NAS/NRC Climate Change Education Roundtable should give yourselves a pat on the back. Are you working in the education programs of any of the federal agencies? Enjoy the moment. But in a sense, all of us in this community, as well as the media who cover our stories, are donating dollars, thought, and effort to this great cause. We should all feel good.
And then get back to the task at hand!

Science, the Write Way

by Emily Morgan, University of Miami-Florida
Writing is a form of expression that has become a difficult task for members of the student scientific community. This is not a remark on the basic skill set for a meteorology student, but rather a result of neglect. A huge part of the academic field focuses more on computer-aided analysis, modeling, computation and processes that can very readily led themselves to good writing but often don’t, perhaps because it’s so much more convenient to move on to the next task without explaining the first.
I’ve often wished the science courses I’ve participated in included an increased focus on written analysis of topics, even just simple written forecast discussions or responses to research results, so that we become more familiar with expressing ourselves concisely and fully to a broad audience. It boils down to trying to communicate through a medium that cannot rely on facial expressions and you-know-what-I-mean’s. There is no “question and answer” session after the essay, aside from disgruntled and confused e-mails from readers, and the writer cannot instantly respond to the blank faces of his readers. So the readers, not able to grasp the main theme of the writing, leave the writer without an audience for his point. A terrible fate this is, as writing in science has vital purpose: to convey important research findings, to apply for funding to allow research to flourish, to explain a complex process to students at any level. So why is this form of communication neglected, shunned, even dreaded?
Dr. David Schultz, presenting “Practical Advice for Students and Scientists,” addressed some of my concerns. His seminar focused on commanding, concise titles and effective abstract writing, his mindset being that these are components of a paper that are the most relevant to the reader, who should be the main focus of the paper. His fourth and final rule of writing was “We write for our audience, not for ourselves,” something he reiterated throughout the seminar. He presented a relationship between an effective writing process and an effective forecasting process, where both benefit from a constant narrowing in focus from broad scale ideas to microscale changes. Active writing, rather than passive writing, he claims, is a much more effective way to write. Not all in attendance were comfortable with these ideas, claiming that they’ve always been told to use the passive voice and including anything in first person is seen as unprofessional. One individual was in awe that Dr. Schultz would even suggest replacing the phrase “it was suggested that” with the phrase “I think.” I believe that it is this mindset that continues the difficulty of embracing scientific writing and it was very inspiring to see someone who was intent on easing people out of these bad habits.
Finally, in what I believed was his most important point, he urged the room to “treat all your writing as if it counted.” So it was wonderful to hear this from Dr. Schultz as a reassurance to a sometimes-bewildered writer. Writing can be an intimidating affair, even with the right skills, so to bolster one’s confidence with the thought that this writing does, in fact, matter can be the difference between long, wishy-washy reports and strong, concise writing.
Editor’s note: David Schultz is conducting a workshop, “Eloquent Professional Communication,”  Tuesday, 1:30 pm-3 pm, WSCC 3B. He is also presenting “Best Resources for Communication Skills for Scientists” at the Atmospheric Science Librarians International session, 8:45-9:45 am Wednesday, WSCC 304.

A Passion for Mentoring

by Emily Morgan, University of Miami-Florida
Saturday afternoon, I literally almost bumped into Kenneth Carey, who quickly introduced himself as one of the AMS Beacons. He followed my fellow students and me up to our next seminar in the Student Conference. He was very charismatic, very animated, and quite welcoming to a first-time student. Within the first few minutes, he launched into his passion for mentoring and both what it means to him and what effects he has seen it have on others. It was very interesting to hear him laud this communal support separate from any one organization; it really made his argument sincere.
Presenting on “Success in the Job Market,” Mr. Carey welcomed students with a display of many opportunities, urging them to be resourceful and keep their eyes open for opportunities in both federal and private sectors. The most interesting part of his presentation was his list of “10 Skills to Succeed.” All were sound points:

10. Pursuit of excellence.
9. Persistence.
8. Ability to work with others.
7. Innovation.
6. Decision-making.
5. Ability to get things done.
4. Networking.
3. Balance, relaxation.
2. Writing.
1. Public speaking.

Mr. Carey provided much advice for honing these skills, but following this slide, he spoke again about mentoring, whether being a mentor or the mentored. Because of his passion or his persistence, I was sincerely moved by his presentation. It seemed that his only goal was to benefit the meteorological community by encouraging its members to occasionally think of the whole, rather than its parts. Often we can get lost in our own goals and forget that the student beside you has them as well. More so than improving on decision-making (Point 6) and persistence (Point 9), I have become convinced that sharing and working together with my colleagues (Point  8!) will bring me success.

And Speaking of Fun…

by Steve Ackerman, Annual Meeting Co-Chair
Raj concluded a posting about communications themes at the Annual Meeting by saying, “Have fun.” That ought to be easy. It is always a joy to meet old friends at these meetings, and make new ones. In addition to the Wednesday banquet, the lunches, the art show, and WeatherFest, there is lots of fun in store at various sessions throughout the meeting. Everyone has their favorite lightning story, and there are a several papers throughout the conference on lightning; including recent modeling advance, future satellite observations, lightning climatologies and communicating safety procedures to the public. I’m looking forward to the session on Eyjafjallajökull Volcanic Eruption of 2010, to hear about what was learned about the eruption and its impact. There are several papers that deal with artificial intelligence – which makes me wonder how listening is incorporated into A.I. There are many interesting papers presented throughout the meeting and the AMS calendar scheduler is a good way to keep track of papers you want to hear. There is a lot of ‘pink’ in my schedule (for those who haven’t used it, a pink cell denotes a conflict between one or more events.) I also enjoy the poster sessions — that is a good time to have some dialogue about research that interests me.
Oh, and once we all learn how to communicate better, take some time to comment on the AMS draft statement on “communicating science.”