We’re all in New Orleans for science, but for the sake of technology, let’s indulge in a brief philosophy break.
We all know that the present is shaped by the past. Part of the reason is psychology: people easily recall experiences–indeed, emotions–from the past. We can even empathize with other people’s past experiences through their stories.
But philosophers note a peculiar aspect of this ability to make mental time trips. For all of our empathy for the people of the past, our anticipation of the future is much less “real” to us. Often, even the near-certain knowledge of future difficulties, or outright pain, especially if it involves other people (like our progeny!), is not enough to change our current behavior. Our minds don’t travel well to the future.
Of course, economists can tell you something similar about discounting the future–rationality about future benefits is beyond many of us. Even in our own community, climate scientists are finding that it’s a lot easier explaining to most people what’s happened than talking about what might happen. The future is just not as real as the past.
And yet, dreaming about the future is big business: it sells technology, it sells movies, magazines, books, gadgets, and world expos. Futurism is here to stay. In fact, it will be here all week, starting with Monday’s AMS Presidential Forum, which will give us all a chance to talk and dream about what the future will look like for the atmospheric and related sciences. To help start a dialogue that clearly is fascinating but more difficult to do than one might expect, AMS President Jon Malay and his forum co-chair George Komar have given this year’s plenary session a whole new, interactive style. Here they are to explain:
We all know floods are not friendly. But the NWS and the nonprofit environmental organization Nurture Nature Center (NNC) are taking a new approach to flood education by accepting they are a part of nature that at times cannot be avoided, but can certainly be mitigated. This week’s 21st Symposium on Education will include a poster on the NNC/NWS partnership.
After a series of severe flood events in the Delaware River Valley, the NNC started “Floods Happen. Lessen the Loss,” an education program that emphasizes adaptation over prevention, acceptance over angst, and most importantly, education over ignorance. The program not only provides resources (including interviews with flood experts) and tools, but it also explores the deeper issues of how flooding affects communities and how those communities can live with and adapt to floods. This community-based approach to flood preparation is captured in this animated short film created by the NNC.
One of the key themes of the program is helping communities and individuals learn how to help themselves and then take the initiative to do so. For example, a new NWS flood warning system using Push technology sends out alerts to individuals’ e-mail addresses, internet browsers, and some cell phones . . . but only if the individual takes action and signs up for the alerts. (This link provides a how-to for signing up.) In this video, the NNC’s Rachel Hogan Carr explains how the program addressed another problem–the semantics of the term “100-year floodplain”:
The commonly used, but misleading concept, is the 100-year flood, which leads people to believe falsely that major flooding will occur only every hundred years on average. The truth is that even smaller storms can produce tremendous damage. In many areas along the Delaware River, the flooding in 2004, ’05, and ’06 was much smaller than a 100-year flood, but the damage was nonetheless extensive. And that’s just one problem with the term. The other is that many areas well outside the hundred-year floodplain are liable to flooding, too. In fact, nearly 30% of national flood insurance claims come from outside the 100-year floodplain, often in places where people thought they were safe. That’s why Nurture Nature has started using the terms high, moderate, and low risk to describe various regions of the floodplain.
The NWS/NNC collaboration now has a second initiative: the placement of NOAA’s Science on a Sphere at the NNC’s flood museum, and the creation of the first Science on a Sphere flood-related program, which will explain how climatic and oceanic changes are contributing to the increasing frequency and severity of floods throughout the world.
At its meeting this morning, the AMS Council approved its influential Information Statement on Freedom of Scientific Expression for a five-year term. The statement is identical to the one that had been in force and was set to expire soon. The new expiration date is February 2017.
This statement has been welcomed throughout the scientific community as a whole, forming the basis for similar statements by other scientific societies. For example, in 2009 the American Geophysical Union adopted word for word the AMS text for its own Statement on Free and Open Communication of Scientific Findings.
Maintaining this unified position amongst scientific communities facilitates communication to the public about the strongly held values of the profession as a whole.
The AMS and AGU Statements state, for example, that
The ability of scientists to present their findings to the scientific community, policy makers, the media, and the public without censorship, intimidation, or political interference is imperative. In return it is incumbent upon scientists to communicate their findings in ways that portray their results and the results of others, objectively, professionally, and without sensationalizing or politicizing the associated impacts.
It is hard to imagine a statement that could be more apt to the conferences we’re about to launch here in New Orleans.
In other steps related to Statements at its morning meeting, the AMS Council voted to extend the life of the current Information Statement on Climate Change. The expiration date has been extended from 1 February 2012 to 1 September 2012. In addition to maintaining a clear, scientifically sound position on this newsworthy topic, this new step gives the drafting committee for an updated climate change statement more time to respond to detailed feedback from the September 2011 Council meeting. (See The Front Page post issued yesterday for more about the progress of this committee and of Statements in general.)
Also, this morning the Council encouraged a proposal to update the Statement on Meteorological Drought. However, the Council did not approve the proposal as is, and asked the drafting committee to broaden participation to better include perspectives from the hydrology and water resources communities, and experts from other parts of the world.
Congratulations to everyone who participated in Weather Quest at this year’s AMS Student Conference! 25 + 8 + 9 + 16+ 9 + 11+ 16 + (-1) = the correct answer of 93
A U S T I N T X
Anyone who submitted the correct answer was eligible for one of the prizes and their entries were weighted and randomized.
Random drawing winners were Jessica Taheri, Bevan Glynn, Sean Wolinsky, and Elizabeth Zbacnik, who won an assortment of prizes.
Fifth prize went to Branden Spinner, Valparaiso University, and fourth went to Anna Schneider, Penn State University; both received AMS weather DVDs, a book, and a USB flash drive. Third prize went to Cassandra Kreckman, Penn State University–she received a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse and a book.
Second prize winner Berkely Twiest of Penn State University won a Kindle Fire and a book.
And the First Prize winner–receiving free registration to the 2013 AMS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, $50 Amazon gift card, and AMS weather DVDs….Dan Goff, of Virginia Tech! They've got Austin on their minds: Winners who were present at the conference collect their prizes.
Today at its annual January meeting, the AMS Council will hear a report from a committee of expert members on the progress of a new revision to its Information Statement on Climate Change.
To say that the AMS’s current statement on this topic is “oft-cited,” particularly by advocates of strong action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, would be an understatement. It represented the best of climate science when it was adopted in February 2007, and includes such wording as:
strong observational evidence and results from modeling studies indicate that, at least over the last 50 years, human activities are a major contributor to climate change
And
increases in greenhouse gases are nearly certain to produce continued increases in temperature.
But despite the importance of keeping the public up to date on advancing climate science, don’t expect any major decisions in New Orleans. In fact, adoption of the updated Statement isn’t even on the Council’s agenda.
Actually, approval of the update would be forbidden by Council policy that requires a 30-day period to allow comments by members. Back in September, the Councilors ensured this by voting nearly unanimously for various enhancements, simplifications, and clarifications in the draft presented at that time. No new draft has yet been presented, though participants in the process report considerable progress. The Council has the option to extend the term of the Statement currently in force while the drafting committee continues its work.
This slow deliberative style is routine for an organization that has greatly expanded, diversified, and matured scientifically in its 92 years. At last year’s meeting, a proposed revision to the Statement on Mobile Homes and Wind Storms was considered. The Council liked the idea enough to approve a revision, suggesting that the “statement be broadened somewhat.” A year later and, still, the new Statement has not been released, even while deadly tornadoes have dominated the news. In fact, in 2011the Council approved only one statement—about Green Meetings.
At last January’s meeting in Seattle the Council decided to set up a committee to review statements that might need revision. The progress on all of these will be slow and iterative—by design.
“We don’t want to say anything unless it’s something we know,” one Council member said this weekend.
In this sense the standard for approving Statements is even more stringent than it is for accepting articles for the scientific journals. Peer review often at least leaves open the idea that results of a well designed and executed study might be invalidated, at least in part.
There’s no allowance for committees sitting up late burning the midnight oil drafting a perfect text to usher in a decision, either: an AMS Council policy doesn’t allow it. When a Council-appointed committee of members finally hands in a draft that the Council feels is good enough, the Statement is only then ready for the 30-day comment period that precedes the Council’s final review and possible approval.
Meanwhile, drafts more often than not shuttle back and forth between the Council and the drafting committee until the exact wording is settled.
In the case of the Information Statement on Climate Change, the anticipated completion date, initially hoped for 1 February 2012, has long been impossible. But the proof of the process, though slow, has its intended effect. Advancing science may eventually require that statements be updated and revised, but statements generally have a long lifetime in the public eye.
Seat back in the upright position, tray table latched, seatbelt tightened, cell phone off. Time to relax and think about something unrelated to work? Nope. In fact it’s time for proof that AMS President Jon Malay picked a great theme for this year’s Annual Meeting .
If you’re flying to New Orleans on United Airlines (yeah, carbon offsets and all), reach into that seat pocket in front of you and pull out Hemispheres magazine and start flipping pages.
You notice right away that there are the usual references to weather: Airline CEO Jeff Smisek greets readers by expressing special kudos to his team (and that means weather forecasters, too) for “overcoming challenges like snowstorms, hailstorms, hurricanes, and the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan.” There’s also an article on what to wear in New York winters and an eye-catching full-page ad from Embry Riddle University (find them at the Career Fair Sunday and Monday) touting their research into wind and underwater turbines for generating electricity.
In particular, check out the “Next Big Things,” a profile feature on six people making a difference in technology. A bunch are directly related to atmospheric science:
Ren Ng, of Lytro Camera, who engineered a way for better, efficient computing and focusing based on a “powerful miniaturized” light sensor—eliminating blur in hand held pocket cameras.
Paul Mascarenas of Ford Motor Company, who’s pushing his technology team to develop wi-fi networks amongst nearby cars in traffic so that they can pass along up-to-the-second observations about road conditions and process better driving strategies.
Jennifer Pahlka, of the nonprofit Code for America, which pays its fellows a stipend for a year to develop software in the public interest, including, for example, “an app for Bostonians to identify snow-covered manholes that need to be shoveled out [that] was later adapted by Honolulu to make sure its tsunami sirens were in working order.” Another app is a web-based solar energy potential calculator.
Remote sensing, road weather networks, mobile apps–these are all familiar themes this week as we look back, and ahead, to how technology shapes our community’s work. For more on the theme and how personally Jon takes it, watch his video on the Ametsoc YouTube Channel:
Before heading to New Orleans for the AMS Annual Meeting in the next day or so, let’s take a moment for a few important travel considerations.
First of all, we wish you safe travels and look forward to seeing you soon. Second, remember that this year, as in the past several, AMS is making increasing efforts to ensure meetings are as environmentally friendly as possible. The biggest part of this is your flight to New Orleans, which will involve a huge quantity of CO2 emissions. According to www.Atmosfair.de, the flight from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans emits the equivalent of 920 kg of CO2 per passenger, which is about half of an entire year’s output of an midsize family car.
So take a moment to consider offsetting these emissions through one of the websites recommended by the AMS (see web page here or information available at the registration desk).
Or, if it’s possible, consider carpooling. If you miss the idea of a few hours reverie while soaring through the clouds–and let’s face it, lots of meteorologists like to fly just because of the spectacular in situ experience–consider the impression you’d make arriving in the Big Easy in one of these: Pulling up to the Convention Center, partly sunny, partly Green. Photo by Maria Cordell. ...or drive the car that makes your own personal cloud. Photo by Andrea Polli.
If there was a Hall of Fame for the atmospheric sciences, John Tyndall would have been one of its first inductees. A truly versatile and inventive scientist, Tyndall’s discovery that blue light is scattered by dust and other tiny particles (now known as the Tyndall Effect) led to an answer to that ever-popular question, “Why is the sky blue?” (Lord Rayleigh gave Tyndall’s discoveries a more formal expression a few years later.)
Tyndall’s imaginative and inquisitive mind ranged far, especially into the chemistry of gases. His study that compared “optically pure” air to regular air found that food remained fresh in the pure air, reinforcing Louis Pasteur’s work on the growth of microorganisms. He studied the flow of glaciers and became an avid mountaineer (there are two mountains and a glacier named after him). He invented the fireman’s respirator and the light pipe (which later led to the development of fiber optics).
But Tyndall is best known for being the person who proved the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere.
Oops!…bad habit, according to Texas A&M’s John Nielsen-Gammon. As part of the Seventh Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research, Nielsen-Gammon will argue (Monday, 2:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m., Hall E) that we should change the term “greenhouse gases” to “Tyndall gases.”
Climate change is quite complicated for the layman to understand. The matter is made worse by the use of a term, the “greenhouse effect”, that refers to a physical system quite unlike the climate system. Communication is not well served by the use of a term that means something different from what it seems to mean. John Tyndall
I propose that the term “greenhouse gases” be avoided entirely, since such gases are either not found in a greenhouse in special abundance or do not serve to warm the greenhouse to an appreciable extent. Instead, with respect to the scientist, John Tyndall, who first demonstrated that many trace atmospheric gases have powerful infrared absorption properties and thus may play an important role in Earth’s climate, I propose that gases with strong infrared absorptive/emissive properties be dubbed “Tyndall gases”.
We’ll let you attend the poster session to get the details on Nielsen-Gammon’s reasoning, but it sounds like an appropriate way to remember one of the founding fathers of climate science. Not only that, but it honors the fact that Tyndall was an impassioned advocate of science and scientists: clear communication was a specialty of his. He wrote numerous books and contributed articles to popular periodicals, but it was as an orator that he most persuasively brought science to the people. A newspaper of the day noted that “Professor Tyndall has succeeded not only in original investigation and in teaching science soundly and accurately, but in making it attractive. . . .When he lectures at the Royal Institution the theatre is crowded.” Tyndall was a gifted speaker who regularly gave talks to the general public and effectively explained abstruse scientific concepts. His 1874 Belfast Address famously championed scientific reasoning over religious or nonrational interpretations.
To get to know Tyndall even better, check out the presentation on Tuesday (3:30 p.m., Room 335/336) by Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He will explore Tyndall’s scientific career and his contributions to the atmospheric sciences. Somerville was on the scientific advisory committee of last year’s Tyndall Conference, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of Tyndall’s paper on the greenhouse effect.
You can’t go home again, novelist Thomas Wolfe famously explained in a novel published, ironically, in 1940–the year Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved the U.S. Weather Bureau from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Commerce.
President Obama’s intention to move the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to the Department of Interior raises all sorts of questions, political, economic, and scientific. It will be impossible to avoid these questions as we gather in New Orleans.
But some people already frame the question as a matter of philosophical, social, and stylistic fit–of how a scientific entity makes a home in a bureaucracy generally obsessed with the back and forth of entitlement and regulation. Environmentalists, for example, have been quick to wonder how scientific management of ocean fishing fares when paired with the agency permitting offshore oil drilling.
As reported in Science online, Scott Rayder, former NOAA chief of staff and now with ITT Exelis Geospatial Systems, noted numerous correspondences between the portfolios of NOAA and its Interior counterparts, yet added, “But one concern is how would these cultures fit together? They have different ways of doing business.”
Finding the right culture for weather services has been an age old problem. AMS Policy Director Bill Hooke goes into detail on the long history of migrations within the federal government from Surgeon General, to Smithsonian, to Army Signal Service, to Agriculture, to Commerce, concluding that there’s an evolving conflict between the ever intensifying, diversifying need for a NOAA-like agency that integrates science and service and a continual political desire to place the agency where it might seem most at home.
A community that serves the development of an economy, sustainability of the environment, and basic security of citizens facing severe weather every day and climate change in the long run is never really going to have just one natural fit in a political scheme. Everyone needs a piece of NOAA. So ultimately the job needs to be done, single-mindedly, and at the same time NOAA is always going to engage nearly every nook and cranny of national welfare. As Hooke points out that the place of this key piece of our community within the federal firmament probably matters less than we might think:
The Earth itself didn’t reorganize. It’s still working the same way, proving to be resolutely variable locally, and globally, and on all time horizons. The proposed government reorganization doesn’t add to or subtract from our imperfect understanding of that Earth. The little bit we know, we still know. The part that remains undiscovered is still opaque. The mechanics of translating knowledge into social benefit remain absorbing. Our little piece? It still needs doing. The urgency and importance of our work continues to grow.
These facts give hope but they don’t solve the cultural question: a mission that grows will never be completely at ease anywhere for long. What is true for people has proven true for a scientific community. As your own experiences change you, home becomes elusive. So the peripatetic governmental entity that has been at the core of our community does not clearly belong anywhere because, well, the notion of weather service has evolved as well. We don’t even call it that, anymore–we talk about national hydrometeorological services, climate services, space weather, sustainability, public health, and so much more.
What is our culture, and how much has it changed? The study of culture is the province of anthropologists for a reason: they are trained to cultivate an outsider’s perspective. De Toqueville’s observations as a Frenchman in America are all the more trenchant for the same reason that Margaret Mead’s observations of Samoans give us insight into our own behavior. All the more valuable, then, are the observations of a onetime-outsider, George Siscoe, a solar physicist and member of one of our most recently developed branches, space weather. Amidst ten historical stages of fundamental change in our community, Siscoe noted a continuity as well:
The orientation of the terrestrial meteorological community, including its research community, is by and large in
the direction of improving forecasts. Most researchers in meteorology might not consciously recognize this, but
program managers and agency heads apparently do, as evidenced by research programs that they define and
support. Moreover, it imbues research meteorology as a community trait, like a shared language. Meteorologists
acquire the trait from their undergraduate and graduate courses and from the example of professional icons such
as Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Jacob Bjerknes, John von Neumann, Edward Lorenz, and Jule Charney. The result is
coherent, discipline-wide progress, discernable against the separate advances of intradiscipline specialties, that
moves the full front of operational forecasting forward. Orientation toward improved forecasts, be it of storms,
global warming, or the ozone hole, constitutes a binding and supportive matrix within which the whole
discipline is consciously or unconsciously embedded.
The weather community can’t go back to being a mystery for medicine men, a toy of pure researchers, an exercise of military regimen, or a sleepy backwater for farmers, nor, for that matter, the business that is the nation’s business. Somehow, in the course of its growth, it is all of these and more: something recognizable but clearly different. What has become–or what it is to become–will probably hinge on this relentless drive for operational improvement. That culture will determine where home really is now, regardless of where the government puts it.
Have you swapped out some old incandescent light bulbs for the newfangled LED lights lately? How about upgraded some software? Switched to online billing?
If you don’t keep up, light bulb by light bulb, technology can leave you behind.
How far behind? According to the National Research Council’s draft report, “National Weather Service Modernization and Restructuring: A Retrospective Assessment,” very far, necessitating an infusion of $4.5 billion from 1989-2000 involving not just new radars, supercomputers, models, data distribution and integration systems, and satellites, but also wholesale movement of offices, shifting of responsibilities. They conclude,
If a science-based agency like the National Weather Service, which provides critical services to the Nation, waits until it is close to becoming obsolete, it will require a complex and very costly program to modernize.
Lesson learned. The new report, which will be the subject of a Town Hall Meeting in New Orleans (Tuesday, 24 January, 6-7 p.m.), issues many compliments to the NWS for the effect of a well planned modernization:
more uniform radar coverage and surface observations across the United States and resulting improvements in handling severe weather.
greatly improved communication and dissemination of weather information
more evenly-distributed, uniform weather services to the nation.
strengthened relationships with community partners, leveraging benefits of modernization.
The report contains much wisdom about how to upgrade and stay on top of the waves of innovation that continually stretch–and thrill–people who work in this field. It notes the need for keeping good statistics of performance to help argue for, and evaluate, modernization. A common theme of recommendations is also the need for better systems engineering–having the expertise, and using early and continually throughout the modernization process is essential. The report also doesn’t neglect the human factor: scientific organizations need dedicated leaders who can see through the modernization process, and as a whole NWS has benefitted now that it has a culture, and a framework, of continual modernization.
There are also pitfalls to expect: the reduced agency workforce was balanced by increased technological costs–agency cost savings were minimal at best. external oversight ensured valuable accountability. Budget overruns and delays were common, some stemming from lack of initial analysis.
While you’re mulling over how this might help you stay up on your career and upgrade your household and office–call it personal modernization, the recommendations of the report are an undercurrent of many sessions at the AMS Annual Meeting, where so much attention is paid to technology. A number of presentations are focusing, for instance, on the AWIPS II and Dual-Pol Radar upgrades in the NWS. But also, for example, Marie-Francoise Voldrat-Martinez is presenting on what various upgrades to WMO and European hydromet and geospatial distribution systems will mean for MeteoFrance’s own information systems modernization (Monday, 1:30 p.m., Room 356).
You can be sure the developing world is listening. Vladimir Tsirkunov, of The World Bank, will be presenting Monday (11:45 a.m., Room 333) on the growing need for better hydrometeorological services internationally. The World Bank is putting money into modernization of national hydrometeorological services. He warns that “capacity in many regions is not adequate and degraded in some countries during the last 15-20 years.”
Sounds familiar. On a less extreme level, there was a time, before 1989, before those $4.5 billion, before a whole new culture, and a whole bunch of new equipment and systems, when people were worrying about similar issues in the United States. No jokes, please, about how many meteorologists and dollars it takes to screw in a new lightbulb!
