The arrival of a new year is a good time to reflect on the significant events of the past 12 months. On Monday, Deke Arndt of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center highlighted the noteworthy trends and events of 2010 in his talk, “The Climate of 2010 in Historical Perspective.” The presentation included these top-10 lists of notable 2010 events, as voted by a panel of weather and climate experts.
National Events
1. Consecutive Winter Blizzards/Extreme Snow Season (December-February)
2. Nashville and Central TN flooding (May)
3. Hot Summer in the East (June-August)
4. Midwest Super Storm (October)
5. Hawaiian Drought (Throughout 2010)
6. No hurricanes made U.S. landfall despite active Atlantic (June-November)
7. Near Eradication of CONUS Drought (July)
8. Vivian, SD Hailstone (July)
9. New England Flooding (February-April)
10. Minnesota as tornado leader (Spring & Summer)
Global Events
1. Russo-European-Asian Heat Waves (Summer)
2. 2010 as [near] warmest on record (Calendar Year)
3. Pakistani Flooding (Late July into August)
4. El Niño to La Niña Transition (Mid-to-Late Boreal Spring)
5. Negative Arctic Oscillation (December-February)
6. Brazillian Drought (Ongoing)
7. Historically inactive NE Pacific Hurricane Season (May 15-November 30)
8. Historic N. Hemispheric Snow Retreat (January through June)
9. Minimum Sea Ice Extent (Mid September)
10. China Drought (First half of 2010)
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Photos, Photos, and More Photos
Pictures are up on the Ametsoc Facebook photo albums! Here’s just a sampling, from Sunday’s WeatherFest. Don’t forget to check back there for more updates later today and throughout the week.
Turning Scientists into Communicators
With the word “communication” flying around the meeting all week, it might become easy to lose track of how it applies to each of us as individuals–or whether it applies to us at all. Does your role as a meteorologist also involve being a communicator? Isn’t that the job of the professional communicators?
This weekend’s communication workshop, “Integrating Communication, Weather, and Climate: More Than Just ”Talking about the Weather!’, asked those questions to some communication professionals, and their answers provided new insights to the many meteorologists in attendance. They ultimately agreed on a couple of key points: 1) the complexities of climate science make communication particularly difficult, and 2) we all have a role in communicating our science, whether it be to the public, government officials, colleagues, students, or even to our families, neighbors, and friends.
And why shouldn’t scientists also be communicators? Panelist Kim Curtis of Resource Media pointed out that scientists are among the most trusted groups by the public, more than even friends and family (and that is despite the fact that only 18% of the public actually know a scientist personally.)
The problem is that there are serious obstacles to getting the message through to the public and insuring they are receiving accurate information. Kathy Rowan of George Mason University highlighted the difficulties of communicating slow-onset risks–that is, hazards (such as long-term climate change) that progress over an extended period of time. She pointed out that humans are wired to focus on what is directly in front of them and often have difficulty looking into the future.
Expanding on that point, Bud Ward of the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media pointed out that when discussing climate change, the public has difficulty accepting costs that must be paid today when tangible benefits may not be felt for a very long time. As he mentioned, we have trouble even agreeing whether to use the term”climate change” or “global warming.” And of course, there are the political aspects related to communicating climate to the public. All of this obviously generates confusion.
So how can scientists overcome these difficulties and act as de facto communicators? The panelists’ recommendations included making explanations as succint and as simple as possible and addressing and discussing uncertainty in science rather than ignoring it. But the prevailing opinion was that scientists communicate most effectively when they make science relevant to the public. Some panelists noted the importance of telling stories that help the public understand how climate impacts their daily lives. And Ward explained how he avoids contentious political discussion when he speaks to local communities by emphasizing the specific ways climate could impact those areas.
According to the panelists, the ultimate goal is make science interesting to the general public while also providing technically accurate information–a fine balance, indeed, but one that hopefully will become less daunting after this week’s meeting.
Bring Your Popcorn!
Satisfy your movie fix all week at the Weather Video Preview Theater in room 303. Close to 50 different movies will be shown throughout the meeting, with screenings running from 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day. DVDs of many of the movies will be available for purchase at the AMS Resource Center in Exhibit Hall 4D (they can also be found online at http://www.sky-fire.tv/index.cgi/INDEX.HTML), and a portion of proceeds from every DVD sold will be directed to AMS educational and outreach programs.
The movies were specifically chosen for the quality of both their production and their scientific content, with the subject matter ranging from the quick-moving (lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, and extreme storms of all kinds) to the slowest of the slow (glaciers).
Among those films that are back by popular demand are the British Broadcasting Cooperation’s Cloudspotting program (a compilation of high-definition time-lapse skyscapes set to music), as well as features from the National Science Foundation’s series for the ResearchChannel.
Check out below the preview of the Nova special, Hunt for the Supertwister, one of the films to be featured at the Preview Theater.
WeatherFest Wows Seattle
More than 4,ooo people converged on the convention center yesterday for WeatherFest 2011. The tenth year of the interactive science and weather fair kicked off with a festive ribbon cutting.
Par for the course, kids were an eager and active presence, crowding the exhibits that featured games and hands-on demonstrations.
With almost sixty exhibits, the weather extravaganza provided numerous ways of finding fun in science education. More WeatherFest videos are posted on our Ametsoc YouTube channel.
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.
Teaching Excellence: Mentor Realizes Dream Award
Henry E. Fuelberg, a professor of meteorology with Florida State University, is this year’s recipient of the AMS award for Teaching Excellence. The Front Page sat down with Dr. Fuelberg to learn more about him, his research program at FSU, and the devotion he has to seeing his team of students excel in their budding careers as meteorologists. He noted after the interview, available below, that of all the prestigious honors the AMS bestows, “this was the award most important to me.”
Fuelberg will receive his award at the AMS Awards Banquet Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Washington State Convention Center, Halls 6A-B-C-D.
Comrades in Communication
The weekend’s workshop on “Integrating Communication, Weather, and Climate: More Than Just ‘Talking About the Weather!'” was the result of a collaborative effort between the AMS and the National Communication Association (NCA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of communication throughout society. The NCA will continue to be a presence at the meeting throughout the week, helping to contribute to the unique interdisciplinarity this year in Seattle.
Congratulations, Student Sleuths!
The student conference contest had a happy ending, it just ended a little sooner than mere mortals would expect. Torey Farney, of Cornell University won First Prize before 4 pm Saturday by managing to anticipate the answer before the announcement of the last clue…something to do with mathematically narrowing the range of possible answers and inspired guesswork. Or was that ESP (Earth Science Perspicacity)? His prize was a free travel and registration for next year’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans.
Camaron Plourde, of Embry-Riddle University, also answered early, winning Second Prize (an Amazon Kindle); and Leah Werner, of Embry-Riddle, won Third Prize (an Amazon gift certificate).
Not that they were the only ones to answer correctly. Some 80 percent of the attendees solved the quest.
Meanwhile, in a related drawing, Gavin Chensue, Univ. of Michigan won a copy of the AMS book, Eloquent Science, by David Schultz; and Adam Atia, City College of New York, won a copy the recently published AMS book, History of Broadcast Meteorology, by Robert Henson.
Thanks to AMS’s co-sponsors in the Weather Quest, Atmospheric Science Librarians International and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for the great prizes.
Got Game? Your Planet Hopes You Do
If you’ve been following Bill Hooke’s blog, Living on the Real World, you know the AMS Policy Program director has been exploring the analogies been contemporary life and various types of games.
Yesterday’s post likened life to a Massively Multiple On-line Role-Playing Game:
On the real world as in the videogame, as time passes, and as gamers surmount one set of challenges after another, the pace quickens and the level of difficulty jumps. On the real world, as we’ve gone from say 1 billion people to 7 billion, each one of which on average may be consuming resources at ten times of her ancestor a century earlier, and as social change had accelerated, the level of difficulty has hit unprecedented heights.
Saturday at the AMS Student Conference, Hooke challenged attendees to become the “Greatest Generation,” by becoming engaged in a modern world that is increasingly insulated and virtual and to equip themselves to thrive on a real planet with real, escalating problems.
In both gaming and life, “it’s easier to lose than to win,” Hooke said, but in life there are “no do-overs, no pause button.” So keep in mind that the videos below may be mere electronic do-overs, with pause buttons, of the complete luncheon talk, but this indeed happened in the real world today in Seattle, before 400 people, with some real answers and real hope for a future informed by science and good policy.