News

A Simple Investment in the Sciences

It’s not every day you get a chance to invest in a sure-fire start-up based on science you know very well. Even rarer is a start-up that is the brainchild of a group of determined middle school students. And when was the last time you could make that investment, for free, with just a click on the internet?
Vicky Gorman, a science teacher in Memorial Middle School in Medford, New Jersey, is currently taking the AMS’s DataStreme Atmosphere distance learning course. The students, and the start-up venture, are hers, so we’ll let Vicky explain it as she did to AMS President Marshall Shepherd this week:

Two of my 7th grade students approached me last fall about submitting an idea for the $5000 Beneficial Foundation School Challenge. These two young ladies brought many ideas and wonderful enthusiasm to the table. We decided on a “Citizen Science Education Program” to bring science into the lives of the citizens of our community, and allow students to apply their science knowledge to the real world. I am developing this program with my students now as my final project for the DatasStreme course. The focus of the program is Earth Science, which as you know, needs a greater presence in both child and adult education in the 21st century. I can see this project making a difference in our community, county, state, and beyond.
Fast forward a few months to January of this year. We were selected as a top ten finalist! However, now, we need your help. We have posted a video to the Beneficial Challenge web site, as have the other nine schools. Click there and you will see that this final phase of the competition will be decided by number of votes for our video.Voting opened on Monday, and closes at midnight on next Monday, 11 March. You may vote every day and multiple times every day.

Here’s what you’re looking for when you click on the links above:
de417321-f855-44f8-a768-b27e3f418545
Let’s take this opportunity to start up something new, and invest in the future of earth sciences.

Vision Prize: Polling Experts about Climate–and Each Other

If you can’t get enough of prediction by forecasting weather or climate–or basketball tournament brackets, elections, and the Oscars—here’s the game for you: Try the web-based opinion poll of climate and earth scientists—the Vision Prize.
A nonpartisan research project using the Web for incentivized polling, the Vision Prize is testing a new way to get scientists to speak candidly to the public about climate change, without media filtering.
“We all recognize the need to do science communication, but we still seem to struggle to do this well,” says Jonathan Foley, Director of the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. “As a new approach to this problem, Vision Prize deserves our attention.”
Foley’s institute is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to try out this poll-based experimental method. The advisors include behavioral psychologists, economists, and public policy scholars, so participating scientists may feel a bit like the tables have been turned, with humans becoming the lab rats on the treadmills.
Don’t let that stop you, however. Participants are having fun at it, getting serious results, learning about their colleagues, and yes—there’s that “incentivized” part—they’re winning prizes, too. Participants not only make gut-check projections about future climate but also predict what their colleagues think—a way for the rest of us to gauge their confidence and consensus.
Surprisingly, so far the results show that experts systematically underestimate the consensus amongst their peers. For example:
VisionPrizeConverge
(“Expected Answers” are predictions of what the most likely answers were; “Actual Answers” are predictions of climate made by those surveyed.) The participants who best predict their colleagues’ opinions win gift cards towards the charity of their choice. All in all, scientists should feel right at home doing public service to win a chance to do even more public service.
Poll results are annotated by a measure of the stature of the participants within the climate science community. The web site provides h-index scores that factor both how many papers participants have published and how often those papers are cited. In a press release today, Vision Prize noted that the polls have been taken by some impressive participants.

“We’re very encouraged by the high quality of our 275+ expert participants,” says Peter Kriss, the director of research. Vision Prize provides mean h-index scores to give readers of the poll an approximate metric for assessing the relative expertise of the participants who selected a given answer. “We were very impressed to find mean h = 36 among our top 50 experts,” says Kriss. As a point of reference, h ≈ 12 might be a typical value for advancement to tenure at major research universities; membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences may typically be associated with h ≈ 45 and higher (Hirsch, PNAS, 2005).

The mean for all participants so far is h=13, but that may change soon.Vision Prize is now actively seeking additional participants from the scientific community, including doctoral students. “The larger the number of climate and earth scientists participating, the more useful the results,” says Vision Prize Managing Director Mark Kriss.
Vision Prize makes its results open to the public, so it’s certainly imaginable that not only are policy makers and pundits paying attention but also some prediction obsessed spectators who themselves are predicting how the polls turn out. The web site is currently polling about a round of topics that began in September 2012 and will wrap up at midnight, April 30th.
If you qualify, by all means get into the game as a participant as soon as possible. Answering the survey questions takes about five minutes, after quick registration. Mark Kriss, Vision Prize managing director, says, “Early voting helps boost participation rates so your post would be timely now. The larger the number of participating scientists, the more useful the results.”
By the way, even if you don’t end up participating, the Vision Prize is also open to suggestions about questions to ask the experts.

The Short and Long of Sequestration Forecasts

By now your head is probably spinning with all the conflicting forecasts what the Federal sequestration will do to us. (For a sample, try the Washington Post’s compilation of various projections.) If the collective disagreement of pundits indicates a kind of chaos–a bit like making a weather forecast when the numerical models just will never converge, an ensemble gone haywire–then you’re right. The reason for the confusion, says AMS Policy Program Director William Hooke, is that nobody knows what will happen. Here’s how he put it, in an interview with The Weather Channel’s Maria LaRosa on yesterday’s Morning Rush show:

TWC: What should we expect in particular for weather agencies? What is your top concern right now?
My top concern is the same as the weather top concern. The uncertainty in all this. We make good weather forecasts because we have practice. The case of the sequestration is something different. It’s unprecedented. We don’t know what will happen. That includes the policy makers at the top and the bench forecasters at the bottom.
TWC It may be a couple weeks before we some of the direct impacts? How are you folks preparing, or can you?
Hooke: You know, an NGO like the American Meteorological Society can’t do much but watch with horrified fascination. The real issue is what happens to those scientists and technicians who try to keep the radars prepared and keep staff online when bad weather occurs with little notice, and just be ready to protect property and to protect the American public.
TWC And the AMS gives out grants for all kinds of things, and how does that impact money that you guys give out?
Hooke: We’ll certainly be getting less and so we’ll be less capable in turn. We, like many private sector firms and academic researchers, depend a great deal on NOAA, the National Weather Service, and other federal agencies to keep things humming, particularly innovation, particularly improvements in forecasts and services.

However, as we know from weather forecasting, the short term may be overwhelmed by chaos and uncertainty, but that doesn’t mean seasonal or climate projections can’t have some teeth in them.  City College of New York physics professor Michael Lubell, who is also director of public relations for the American Physical Society, told Ira Flatow yesterday on National Public Radio’s Science Friday that the short term uncertainty is itself a determinant for the long term prospects of science:

One of the difficulties we have in science is that it’s not like a road project. You say, “well, we don’t have enough money to continue paving something today, we’ll call the crew off and bring them back six months or nine months from now.” Science—you cut it and the people aren’t coming back, facilities aren’t going to be opened again….
I think of this as taking a frog or taking a goose in a pot of water and we’re slowly heating it up, and eventually the goose gets cooked and by the time it gets cooked it’s too late to deal with it. That’s what’s going to happen to us.  Unfortunately the public doesn’t see it immediately, and I think the President probably made a mistake by trying to scare people, because you’re not going to see it at least for several months, if not then. It’s just going to be a slow erosion, and the case with science, as I said, is that erosion is not some you see easily.
I would argue…that the more devastating effects are the long-term effects. If you have a longer line at the airport today, put money back in and those lines will get shorter. If we remove our money from the investment—and let me just make a couple comments about this. I mean half of the economic growth since World War II was attributable to science and technology. One fact that people usually don’t know is that laser enabled technology accounts for one-third of our economy today, and they began with a small amount of government money more than 50 years ago.
[With cuts] the programs shut down forever. When people are smart, they find other things to do.

Hurricane Sandy: NHC Final Report and AMS Town Hall Presentations Online

The National Hurricane Center released its post-storm report on Hurricane Sandy this week, confirming the many nuances of the late-season monster storm we already knew. Yet it’s the details, provided by scientists attuned to getting the minutiae right, that make the report an inviting read.
For starters, the NHC report confirms that Sandy wasn’t a hurricane at landfall. Its core convection collapsed as the center of the storm moved west of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream—the same warm waters that earlier on the day of landfall (October 29, 2012) cranked up Sandy’s winds to 100 mph as the center closed in on New Jersey. Cold air wrapping into Sandy’s center contributed to the collapsing convection, and this structural change transitioned Sandy from tropical to extratropical just 50 miles offshore of Atlantic City.

Sandy Inundation Map
Estimated inundation in feet above ground level in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut from Sandy. (Source: NHC Tropical Cyclone Report—Hurricane Sandy)

 
Post analysis of the storm’s intensity in the Caribbean also explains why NHC has now upgraded Sandy to a Category 3 “major” hurricane with 115 mph winds from Category 2, which at the time had been considered the peak classification prior to landfall in southeastern Cuba. The destruction wrought there, described as “especially severe,” included more than a quarter-million homes damaged and 17,000 sheared to pieces by the extreme winds. Gusts topped 110 mph before disabling the anemometer in Santiago de Cuba, the island nation’s second-largest city, and reached an incredible 165 mph at Gran Piedra (“Big Rock,” elev. 2,000 feet) in the national park east of the city. Sandy killed 11 people in Cuba, an unusually high number in a nation that has weathered numerous ferocious hurricanes with lesser loss of life. It was a testament to Sandy’s fury.
Additionally, the report describes changes proposed to NHC’s watch/warning criteria. If adopted, they will address limitations to the use of tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings when tropical cycl0nes transition to extratropical (i.e., non-tropical or “post tropical”) storms. Facing the potential for Hurricane Sandy to make such a transition prior to striking the Northeast, NHC opted not to issue hurricane watches and warnings north of North Carolina because the transition would force NHC to discontinue them even though the threat for severe wind and tidal conditions remained, which “would cause an unacceptable level of confusion and disruption during critical periods of preparation that included evacuations.” The decision was widely criticized and cited as contributing to the large number of deaths due to storm surge flooding and falling trees in and around New York City.
The report has much more, including details about the record storm tides in New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut, flooding rain in the mid-Atlantic states, and snow in the Appalachians, as well as a breakdown of U.S. deaths and an abundance of observations.
Town Hall Meeting on Sandy
Recordings of the the presentations made at the AMS Town Hall Meeting on Hurricane Sandy at the Annual Meeting in Austin are now available.
Hurricane Sandy Introduction
Tanja Fransen, NOAA/NWS, Glasgow, Montana
Introduction to Sandy and the Major Impacts
Louis W. Uccellini, NOAA/NWS/NCEP, Camp Springs, Maryland
Hurricane Sandy: Hurricane Wind and Storms Surge Impacts
Richard D. Knabb, NOAA/NWS/NHC, Miami, Florida
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy: Rain, Snow and Inland Wind Impacts
David Novak, NOAA/NWS/Hydrometeorological Prediction Center, College Park, Maryland
A Research-Community Perspective of the Life Cycle of Hurricane Sandy
Melvyn A. Shapiro, NCAR, Boulder, Colorado
Communicating the Threat to the Public through Broadcast Media
Bryan Norcross, The Weather Channel, Atlanta, Georgia
Following the Storm through Social Media
Jason Samenow, Washington Post, Washington, D.C.; and Andrew Freedman, Climate Central, New York, N.Y.
Storm Response in New York and New Jersey
Eric Holthaus, The Wall Street Journal, New York, N.Y.
 

State of the Union Address Sets Stage for Senate Climate Hearing Today

If, last night, you made it through the usual State of the Union appeals to bipartisanship, tax reform, health care, job creation, deficit control, and industrial revitalization–then you heard President Obama’s unusually blunt promise to take action on climate change.
And all you had to do was wait through the rest of the night before Congress started working on its response. The Senate Committee on Environment and Infrastructure, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, has already lined up a session on the “Latest Climate Science” for this morning, at 10 a.m. EST. The blue-ribbon panel of invited experts providing testimony includes AMS President J. Marshall Shepherd and you can follow the live webcast of the hearing at the committee’s website.
The hearing originally looked like a relatively routine overview of science following the release of the newly drafted National Climate Assessment, but now it is charged by the President’s new resolve to begin dealing with climate change, with or without Congressional input. His position was staked out in a few sentences hunkered down amidst a flurry of points about energy efficiency and independence:

[O]ver the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.
Now, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods, all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late.
Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to get together, pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago.
If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct..I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

The threat of unilateral Executive action set off a storm of commentary (e.g., Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2) and is sure to put the Senate in a very different frame of mind for today’s hearing. As for the science of climate change and its impacts–the focus of the hearing–this morning’s line-up of guests undoubtedly will have plenty to say about the latest findings. For example, Prof. Donald Wuebbles of the University of Illinois, and Dr. John Balbus, of the National Institutes of Health, are among the lead authors of the 2013 National Climate Assessment (available for comment). Meanwhile, Dr. Shepherd has been speaking out frequently on both the impacts of climate change on society and on the scientific approach to evaluating the effects of climate change on extreme events, and of course he is part of the AMS Executive Council that updated the Society’s information statement on climate change in 2012.

25,000 Euros for Your Thoughts: The Harry Otten Prize

No longer is it enough to offer a penny for your thoughts. As a vital player in the meteorological enterprise, your creativity is now worth a whole lot more–to be exact, 25,000 Euros, if you win this year’s Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology. The prize, which will be awarded every two years, was established with funds from Netherlands meteorologist/entrepreneur Harry Otten, president of MeteoGroup/Meteo Consult. The prize website explains,

A substantial part of the national gross product in many countries is weather dependent. National weather services and the private sector have been innovative for more than a century to make better use of our meteorological knowledge. However, large gains are still to be made and the prize encourages individuals and groups to come with ideas how meteorology in a practical way can further move society forward.

If you can get your application together (the online process is actually quite straightforward) by the 10 March 2013 deadline, you might end up being one of the select three finalists to present your ideas to the Otten Prize jury at the European Meteorological Society meeting in September 2013. The winner will be announced within a day of the final presentations.
To get more of an idea of how the prize process works–and how inflation has marked up the value of your ideas by 2,500,000%–The Front Page interviewed Harry Otten Prize board member Richard Anthes. Dr. Anthes, who is well known to our community as an AMS past president and the president emeritus of UCAR, graciously provided the following responses:
Front Page: What was Harry Otten’s hope for this prize? Why is the Harry Otten Prize a good thing for our community?
Anthes: Harry Otten wants to encourage people to think of innovative ideas that will contribute to or use the science and technology of meteorology to provide services or products that will benefit society.  The Prize is good for our community because it stimulates us to think in creative new ways about how our science can be advanced and used in constructive ways.
In the past you’ve described this prize for Innovation in Meteorology as rewarding “clearly innovative contributions of meteorology to society.” The prize website gives examples of, among other things, innovative ways of observing and innovative applications of existing technology. You even mention the development of useful mobile weather apps. I’m tempted to call it “innovation by meteorology” rather than “innovation in meteorology”. Where is the emphasis in your search for winners?
You raise a subtle point, and the answer is “both.”  Ideas could include new ways of observing the atmosphere and related environment, new ways of forecasting atmospheric phenomena, or new ways of applying meteorological data, information, and/or forecasts to useful applications.  Key words are new and creative.  Incremental, relatively minor advances in methods or technologies are not likely to win the Prize.  We are looking for “out of the box” ideas, original ideas which may appear surprising.
Can you imagine this prize being won by someone who isn’t even a meteorologist, perhaps a clever business idea or innovative teacher (educational ideas being included)? How do you judge such diverse innovations against each other on societal impact?
We can certainly imagine winning ideas coming from outside the field of meteorology, and in fact we would not be surprised to see innovations coming from people with backgrounds or fields quite different from meteorology.  Perhaps the idea will come from someone looking for a solution to his or her problem that depends on meteorology, or a creative person from the arts or a scientific field other than meteorology.  Ranking such diverse ideas could be difficult, but ultimately it comes to a judgment call by the Board after thorough discussion of the competing ideas.
The list of potential past prize ideas also includes climate adaptation…specifically, “using uncertainty in climate projections in a cost-effective adaptation technique”. How broadly construed is your definition of meteorology for the purposes of the prize?
We have a broad and open-minded Board and will consider seriously a broad range of ideas.  Certainly ideas from fields that neighbor meteorology are encouraged, such as oceanography, air quality, climate, and space weather.  I can also imagine a winner coming from education, information technology or communication.  There needs to be a strong relationship to meteorology and potential applications to benefit society, however.
You say you’re not looking for “relatively small improvements” in existing ideas…perhaps you can give an example of what might be too small an innovation?
This is clearly a judgment call, but a slightly different way of displaying radar or satellite data on a personal device or a higher-resolution forecast model might be examples of incremental improvements that would not compete well.  The important point is that we are encouraging people to really brainstorm and think of brand new ideas.  These ideas do not have to be well developed, nor do they need to be proven.  I sat down one evening with a glass of wine and let my mind wander, and in only an hour I came up with four very different ideas that I would have considered as competitive had they been submitted by a contestant.  Naturally I am not applying for the Prize!
The prize is for ideas that are not just innovative but also practical, and realizable—why all three criteria and how would you define practical v. realizable? 
Innovative is obvious—we are looking for new, original, creative ideas.  Practical means that the idea could lead to an application in a relatively short amount of time, perhaps a few years, but not decades or longer.  Thus a basic research idea that might or might not lead to applications many years down the road would not be appropriate.  Realizable means that the idea could be implemented with a reasonable amount of effort and investment and would not run afoul of any physical laws or ethical issues.
How far along toward realization does the idea have to be? What sort of proof of practicality does the committee want when, at the same time, you’re not looking for ideas that are “well developed, implemented, or published”?
This is a very important question.  We do NOT require that the idea be very far along in development or implementation.  It is conceivable that someone could win with an idea that was not developed at all, but was described in enough detail for us to judge that the idea could be developed and implemented.  In fact, we offer to help with the development of the ideas should the winner wish.
I can imagine some people might want to keep their best ideas for this prize under wraps until they’ve had a chance to establish them, perhaps profit from them. How do you convince people to apply with ideas that aren’t yet published or might later reap profitability?
We hope that this is not a serious issue.  If someone has a great idea that is in an early stage of development, please send it in!  We will protect the intellectual property of the proposer and make public only the broad outlines of the idea.  We will also work with the proposer of the idea in any announcements of the winning idea.  Finally, the amount of the prize itself is likely to help develop patents or property rights protection.
How often do you overhear ideas at meetings, workshops, etc., that seem to you to fit these qualifications? Are such ideas rare, even in our community?
I do not hear the type of ideas we are seeking very often in such fora.  I think really fresh ideas are rare because most people are thinking of incremental advances as part of their jobs—better meteorological displays, higher resolution models and forecasts, more accurate forecasts, better use of ensemble techniques, more accurate or lower cost sensors, higher spectral resolution satellite observations, etc.  But if people tried, I think they would be surprised at how creative they could be.
In the first round of the prize last year two honorable mentions were given out, but no first prize.  What does this say about the minimum standards the Foundation is trying to establish for such a big prize?
The first prize is 25,000 Euros.  That is a substantial prize and the Board wants to set reasonably high standards for winning ideas.  But the standard should not be so high as to make it nearly impossible to win.
The foundation says “efforts of large teams in which the original idea cannot be clearly associated with an individual or a small group of individuals (maximum 3) will not be considered.” Why not consider prizes for large groups?
We want to reward individuals or very small groups that come up with a new idea.  It is unlikely that a new creative idea will be generated by a large group of people.  A large group might be necessary to implement an idea, but the idea itself is likely to originate from one or two people.
Winners will retain full rights to their ideas but when wanted help is offered to realize the winning ideas. What sort of help, under what conditions, does the Prize foundation offer?
We would discuss the possibilities with the winner.  We might advise the person on how to implement the idea, and perhaps put the person in contact with an appropriate private company, university, or government lab that could help the person implement the idea.
What is your goal for the prize, in terms of the kind of impact the Prize can have on the community, or change it can bring about?
In the best case an idea would result in a new product or type of information that would generate revenue through a private company while supporting society by producing useful information or predictions, saving lives and property, improving the quality of life, and creating an economic benefit—an idea that would make a significant difference for the better.

2013 Recipient of Biometeorology Award Aims to Resolve Complex Boundary Layer Interactions

Thomas Foken, professor of micrometeorology at the University of Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Research in Bayreuth, Germany, is the 2013 recipient of the AMS Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biometeorology. Specifically, Dr. Foken received this award for many contributions, as a researcher and educator, to the understanding and measurement of atmosphere-biosphere interactions and the surface energy balance.
The Front Page caught up with Dr. Foken at the 2013 Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, to find out more about his research, including his interests in micrometeorology. His described this area of our science as the physics and chemistry of the boundary layer, which encompasses the lowest portion of atmosphere, and the complicated interactions among plants, soils, the oceans, and the atmosphere. He adds that micrometeorologists investigate all the parameters in the global models that are part of this small-scale environment, known as the biosphere or ecosphere. Moreover, he defines biometeorology as an interdisciplinary science that brings meteorologists, soil scientists, and biologists together to better understand the processes that define all of these small-scale interactions so the problems they present within the models can be resolved.
Click on the image below to view the interview.

Broadcast Meteorologist Explains the Climate Change Impacts Already Affecting His Viewers

Chief Meteorologist Jim Gandy of the Columbia, South Carolina, CBS affiliate station WLTX-TV is the 2013 recipient of the AMS Award For Excellence in Science Reporting by a Broadcast Meteorologist. Mr. Gandy received the award and recognition for pioneering efforts to educate viewers about climate change and explaining how it already affects them.
In an interview with the AMS, Mr. Gandy explains how he developed a climate change segment for his Weathercasts called Climate Matters. Each segment focuses on an aspect of climate change that is already showing up where viewers live, work, and play. The Climate Matters stories, including the segment about Poison Ivy and Climate Change that won him the award are posted online for not just his viewers but everyone to watch. He also mentions that the favorable response from his viewers about the segments sparked the creation of a blog for the station he similarly named Weather and Climate Matter.
Click on the image below to view the interview. (Please note that the video portion of the interview has a bit of a lag, and for that we apologize; the audio itself is clear.)

Investigating Tornado Fatalities

Men, particularly the elderly, die at a disproportionately higher rate than other population groups. It’s a well-known fact to those studying tornado fatalities, but what researchers are trying to find is a way to keep more of these high risk men responsive to alerts and therefore save lives.
Wednesday morning at the AMS Annual Meeting, several researchers discussed their research on tornado fatalities. The policy session, chaired by Kimberly E. Klockow of the University of Oklahoma, showed that social sciences and data collection methods are improving the way we can analyze deadly storms and adequately warn the public before these storms strike.
Amber Cannon of the University of Oklahoma started the discussion with a comparison of data from tornado outbreaks in Alabama on 3 April 1974 and 27 April 2011. She noted that, although more people died in the 2011 outbreaks than in 1974, the population density had increased during that time. As a result, the fatality rates very similar.
If the death rate isn’t going up, then maybe we can bring it down. Shadya Sanders, from Howard University, presented her research regarding the super outbreak of tornadoes in 2011. She found that, while a 45% tornado risk seems huge to a meteorologist, the average person may not see the gravity of such a situation. Her work with focus groups has shown the importance of education for children and risk awareness for adults.
Soon, according to Hope-Anne Weldon of the University of Oklahoma, there will be a “one-stop shop” for killer tornado information from the NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center. Weldon spent an entire summer filling in gaps in data about tornado victims, clarifying tags of age, gender, and domicile in statistics for 1991-2010–in all 400 tornadoes killing more than 1,100 people. With more detailed data, she noted, social scientists will be able to draw even better conclusions.

The Year by the Numbers

Here’s a statistic for you: 3,300.
That’s the number of attendees (as of Tuesday) at this AMS Annual Meeting.
Here’s another: 1,000.
That’s the lower estimate of attendance at our WeatherFest here in Austin on Sunday.
Here’s another: 2013.
No, that’s not the number of umbrellas sold to meteorologists in downtown Austin yesterday; that’s the year, which happens to be the International Year of Statistics. The American Statistical Association (ASA) and more than 1,400 organizations in 111 countries are combining energies in 2013 to promote statistics. “Statistics2013” will highlight the contributions of the statistics field to finding solutions to global challenges.
“For most people, statistics is an invisible science,” says Ronald Wasserstein, executive director of the American Statistical Association. “Through this yearlong, worldwide awareness campaign, we will remove the veil that cloaks statistics from the public consciousness.”
Such awareness is not difficult to acquire through the programming of the week’s meeting in Austin, with sessions on characterizing uncertainties, data assimilation, Big Data, climate trends, radar algorithms, and so much more. But there’s no better way to kick off Statistics2013 than to attend tomorrow’s poster session (9:45 a.m.) for the Symposium on the Role of Statistical Methods in Weather and Climate Prediction. Bias correction, microphysics parameterization, statistical downscaling, model postprocessing–it’s Gauss in Wonderland.
From the Statistics2013 website:

When many people hear the word “statistics,” they think of either sports-related numbers or the college class they took and barely passed. While statistics can be thought about in these terms, there is more to the relationship between you and statistics than you probably imagine.

And here’s that number, again: 3,300…that’s how many people here at the Austin Convention Center who would heartily agree.