by Ward Seguin, 2012 AMS Annual Meeting Chair
For many years, organizers of the Annual Meeting have encouraged conferences to join forces to host joint sessions for the purpose of sharing presentations of mutual interest. A few years ago, organizers of the Annual Meeting proposed themed joint sessions that focused on the theme of the Annual Meeting.
Concerned that conferences participating in the Annual Meeting might not understand the purpose of joint sessions and, in particular, themed joint sessions, this year’s organizers decided to start the planning process early. At the 2011 Annual Meeting in Seattle, organizers for the 2012 meeting met with all of the conference committees holding meetings in Seattle to encourage future participation in the themed joint sessions. This was followed by e-mail contacts in February designed to reach those conference committees not present at the Seattle meeting.
In April, the conferences were asked to propose themed joint sessions focusing on AMS President Jon Malay’s 2012 theme of “Technology in Research and Operations–How We Got Here and Where We’re Going.“ The response from the conferences was outstanding, as 20 themed joint sessions are currently being organized. With so many conferences holding meetings in January, themed joint sessions encourage sharing of information among the government, academia, and the private sector in diverse subdisciplines. Participants are able to share their experiences of common problems and solutions, and attendees are able to take in papers related to the theme without having to move from one session to another.
Because the 2012 Annual Meeting theme is so broad, the range of topics being covered by the joint sessions provides an excellent opportunity for diverse conferences to come together. For example, one session–jointly hosted by the 10th Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications to Environmental Science and the 18th Conference on Satellite Meteorology, Oceanography, and Climatology–is titled “Artificial Intelligence Methods Applied to Satellite Remote Sensing.” Another themed joint session, “Recent Advances in Data Management Technologies and Data Services,” will be hosted by the 28th Conference on Interactive Information Processing Systems (IIPS) and the Second Conference on Transition of Research to Operations: Successes, Plans, and Challenges. Still another session will focus on “Extreme Weather and Climate Change” and will be hosted by the Seventh Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research, the 24th Conference on Climate Variability and Change, and the 21st Symposium on Education.
The format of themed joint session will include distinguished invited speakers, panel discussions, and submitted papers. Jon Malay’s chosen theme is allowing some very diverse conferences to focus together on some of today’s research and operations challenges through technology.
The deadline for abstract submissions for these sessions is August 1, and abstracts can be submitted on the AMS website at the abstracts submissions page.
AMS DataStreme Teachers Brown Bag it at NOAA
The AMS Education Program has been actively training teachers in the atmospheric, oceanic, and climatological sciences for 20 years. Over 16,000 teachers have taken part in its professional development program, DataStreme. In June, some of DataStreme-trained teachers attended a NOAA brown-bag seminar, where their presentations were seen by NOAA education officials.
The teachers—who hailed from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware—are representatives from an AMS DataStreme Local Implementation Team (LIT). The LIT teams are run by a master teacher and local scientist. The setup provides training for teachers in a specific scientific field as well as helping them strategize ways to bring scientific information into the classroom. LIT team leader and DOE Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow John Moore was so inspired by the teachers’ hard work and creative applications of Earth Science to their classrooms that he orchestrated the brown-bag meeting to facilitate dialog between the NOAA funders and the end-result teachers.
The teachers described the positive impact of bringing real-world NOAA and NASA data into the classroom, using skills from AMS DataStreme courses. They shared how strategies developed in DataStreme Atmosphere, Ocean, and Earth’s Climate System programs could be creatively implemented in the classroom, such as introducing a climate-science section by reading a novel with a general environmental theme, or comparing “textbook” atmospheric data with real data provided by NOAA and NASA. Teachers lauded DataStreme for providing the relevance needed to keep their students excited about science and help develop them into better decision makers. Others thanked NOAA and NASA for the opportunity to bring free, real-world data into the classroom.
In addition to the live audience, the presentations were also Web cast to NOAA offices across the country. The Archived PowerPoint slides from their presentations can be accessed at http://www.lib.noaa.gov/about/news/brownbagseminars.html.
NOAA: 'Unmistakable' Global Warming Continues
NOAA released the 2010 edition of its annual State of the Climate report this week revealing that Earth’s atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are rising unabated. The 218-page report, consisting of the peer-reviewed conclusions of more than 350 researchers in 45 nations, will be distributed with the June issue of the Bulletin of the AMS.
A press briefing summarizing the report’s findings noted a “consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans” that the world continues to warm.
Those signals include last year’s global surface temperatures virtually tying 2005 as the warmest in the reliable global record, which dates to 1980. The Arctic warmed about twice as fast as the rest of the world, reducing sea ice extent to its third lowest level on record.
The area of Arctic sea ice was so small in September that for the first time in modern history both the Northwest Passage through northern Canada’s usually ice-bound islands as well as the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s northern coast were open for navigation.
Average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) worldwide were third warmest on record in 2010. This was despite a nearly 2°F SST drop since 2009 as major El Niño warming of the tropical Eastern Pacific during the first half of 2010 rapidly transitioned to a major La Niña cooling event.
Greenland’s ice sheet lost more mass in 2010 than in any year during the last decade. The melt rate was nearly 10 percent more than the previous record year for loss, 2007. Mountain glaciers globally lost mass for the 20th straight year.
Additionally, global ocean heat content last year was among the warmest on record, following the trend of 2009. Warmer oceans combined with glacial melting to increase average sea levels around the world.
Climate indicators tracked in the State of the Climate during 2010 also included precipitation, greenhouse gases, humidity, cloud cover and type, temperature and saltiness of the ocean, and snow cover.
The report indicated that the concentration of carbon dioxide continued to rise in 2010, surpassing 390 parts per million (ppm) for the first time. In 1979, the CO2 concentration reached 340 ppm.
The 2010 Climate Report also notes that the oceans were found to be saltier than usual in some areas, due to increased evaporation of the sea surface, and less salty, or “fresher,” than average where precipitation was more than is typical. Researchers conclude in the report that this is a sign that Earth’s water cycle is intensifying, which will lead to heavier rainfall and snow events worldwide.
Such events reached extremes in 2010, assisted in part by the transition to La Niña as well as an extraordinarily abnormal pressure anomaly in the northern Atlantic Ocean referred to as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Helping to create a blocking weather pattern over Greenland, and generating huge undulations in the jet stream, the NAO in early 2010 resulted in a lopsided winter in North America with warmer- and drier-than-usual weather in much of Canada and frigid and snowy weather in the Eastern third of the United States), and the coldest winter in more than 30 years in the United Kingdom.
While this blocking pattern eased its extreme grip across North America and Western Europe into summer, continued amplification of ridges and troughs downstream across Asia contributed to a searing summer heatwave in Russia and epic flooding in Pakistan. More than two months of above-average temperatures, including all-time record heat in Moscow, resulted in at least 14,000 heat-related deaths as well as choking wildfires. At the same time, extreme monsoon rains inundated a fifth of Pakistan, displacing more than 20 million people in normally fertile flood plains.
The year 2010 ended with unprecedented flooding across eastern Australia. The lingering La Niña pattern coupled with the enhancement in the water cycle led to the region’s wettest spring (September–November) since record keeping began 111 years ago. December precipitation in the state of Queensland was more than double the average amount, which led to massive flooding where entire geographical regions of the nation—not just cities and towns—were under water.
The overall consensus, especially when considering the dire predictions of an increasingly warmer world, is that the events and records of 2010 are the new normal on planet Earth. In one way, NOAA is confirming this today, releasing its new “climate normals” for temperature and precipitation for the United States, which serve to put into perspective current extremes based on the changing climate of the most-recent 30 years of data. The new climate “normals” valid for the period 1981-2010 have increased in temperature just as the State of the Climate has observed. Comparing the new temperature normals to those of the past decade—the period 1971-2000—shows they’ve increased by 0.5°F in that 10-year period over the United States.
“The [global] climate of the 2000s is about 1.5°F warmer than the 1970s, so we would expect the updated 30-year normals to be warmer,” NOAA National Climatic Data Center Director Thomas R. Karl says with regard to the new report.
Inside the AMS Annual Report
This past year was a busy one at AMS. Along with the usual activities, there were a slew of events and new projects in the works. While BAMS, the Web site, and The Front Page communicate what is happening within the Society, there is another not-so-obvious resource to find out what’s going on: the AMS Annual Report. For instance, did you know:
The total number of AMS members at the end of the year was 13,963, and the number of full members increased for the fifth year in a row.
The Policy Program developed a disaster risk reduction alliance with the Aerospace Medical Association, the leading professional society of military medical doctors in the U.S. and overseas, on the topics of climate and weather-scale impacts to human health.
5,366 people attended AMS conferences and symposia, compared to 4,235 the previous year, and a total of 4,233 papers were presented.
The conversion to a new Manuscript Tracking System significantly increased production capabilities in the Publications Department.
The fellowship and scholarship program celebrated its 20th year, which, since its inception, has awarded nearly $8.4 million to more than 900 students.
118 broadcast meteorologists earned the CBM Certificate, bringing the total number of active CBMs to 470.
The AMS book Eloquent Science and Weather on the Air received “Highly Recommended” ratings from CHOICE, a journal of current reviews for academic libraries published by the Association of Library and Research Libraries.
The entire 2010 Annual Report is available on the AMS website.
Emergency Response Technology Goes On Demand
When the American Red Cross responded the morning after the 24 May tornado outbreak in central Oklahoma, they had a new tool in their pocket. The Warning Decision Support System—Integrated Information (WDSS-II), developed by NOAA’s National Severe Storm Lab, cut disaster assessment time from 72 hours down to 24, a major improvement that could save many lives when it comes to rescue in the wake of a disaster.
The WDSS-II works by narrowing when and where the severe weather most likely occurred. Using radars, satellites, and other observation systems, the On Demand feature of the tool records tracks of rotation and hail swath images that can be opened in Google Earth. When street maps are overlaid with these images, disaster teams can assess which areas likely need assistance first, as well as the most accessible routes to take.
“They no longer have to put boots on the ground to visually assess the situation before planning how they will deploy response teams,” comments Kurt Hondl, NSSL research meteorologist. “It makes the coordination and planning of the American Red Cross’s response so much more efficient.”
The WDSS-II On Demand software is available to American Red Cross officers and other assessment organizations. More than 250 volunteers in Oklahoma and Texas have been trained so far by the Red Cross to utilize the NSSL On Demand software. Other organizations, like FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, have begun to take advantage of the technology as well.
Increasing Clouds with a Greater Chance of Hits
If you’ve ever stepped into the batting cage at your local amusement park, you know how difficult it is to hit a baseball. As Ted Williams once said, “Making good contact with a round ball and round bat even if you know what’s coming is hard to do. That seems to be the one major thing that all young players have difficulty with. Why? It’s the hardest thing to do in sports. ” That being the case (and who are we to argue with the man whom many consider to be the greatest hitter who ever lived), baseball players at all levels would be wise to check out the study published in the latest issue of Weather, Climate, and Society that analyzes the influence of weather conditions on the performance of Major Leaguers. 
Wes Kent and Scott Sheridan of Kent State University examined statistics from more than 35,000 Major League games played in 21 different stadiums between 1987 and 2002, as well as NCDC cloud-cover data taken from the closest NWS office to the ballparks for all of the day games during the studied period. They found that hitters performed better on cloudy days, while pitchers’ statistics improved when the sun was shining. For hitters, this trend was most noticeable in batting averages, which when comparing clear-sky and cloudy-sky conditions improved from .259 to .266 for home teams and from .251 to .256 for road teams. For pitchers, strikeouts were the most salient statistic, increasing by almost half a strikeout per game on days with clear skies. The study also looked at a number of other statistics, including home runs, earned run average, errors, and winning percentage, with the results showing varying levels of weather influence. Additionally, the research made some interesting findings related to ballparks, with certain stadiums reflecting much more consistent trends than others, perhaps at least partially due to their architectural design.
In examining the batting and pitching stats, it really comes down to that fundamental skill of putting bat to ball that Williams talked about. As the authors write in the article:
One of the most crucial aspects to the pitcher-batter interaction is how well the batter can see the pitch. Changing cloud cover presents different playing conditions, with some playing conditions potentially helping a batter see a pitch, whereas others may make reading a pitch more difficult. For example, brighter conditions may result in increased eye strain for a batter and a higher level of glare in a ballpark. These factors could contribute to less than favorable conditions for a batter trying to focus on a pitch, impacting performance in a number of areas.
In a recent interview, the New York Mets’ David Wright supported this premise, saying, “When it’s overcast, your eyes are a little more relaxed, I think. There’s not as much squinting. Sometimes, when it’s really bright, it’s a little tougher to see as a hitter. I always prefer a little cloud cover.”
After all, according to Williams, you can’t understand hitting without understanding the science: “If there is such a thing as a science in sport, hitting a baseball is it. As with any science, there are fundamentals, certain tenets of hitting every good batter or batting coach could tell you.” If he were still alive and hitting, we bet Williams would use this new research to his advantage at the plate.
Oklahoma Mesonet Station Stands Tall in EF-4 Tornado
by Chris Fiebrich, Oklahoma Climatological Survey
It was bound to happen eventually. The Oklahoma Mesonet has 120 weather stations across the state, about one every 30 km. Since 1994, we’ve had a lot of close calls with severe weather, but the highest wind speed ever recorded had been 113 m.p.h. at our Lahoma station during a thunderstorm in August 1994. That all changed on May 24, 2011 when a strong tornado clipped our El Reno station. The graph below shows that winds gusted to 151 m.p.h. shortly after 4:20 PM. Along with the wind gust, the station recorded a strong pressure drop.
At this time, the tornado has been rated as “at least EF4” (see http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/?n=events-20110524-pns1 for the latest on the tornado ratings). The tornado was on the ground for 75 miles. It’s center was likely several hundred yards north of our station as it blew through.
A piece of flying debris sheared off the station’s 2 m anemometer just after it reported a wind gust of 126 mph. The station’s temperature aspirator was also damaged, and one of the tower’s guy wires was snapped. A piece of metal debris was found wrapped around the tower. Despite minor damage, the tower stood tall and the official 10 m anemometer survived in perfect condition with a piece of metal debris wrapped around it. A large nearby tree was found uprooted and thrown across the roadway.
More pictures can be found on the Mesonet Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mesonet.
Interactive Slide Shows Joplin Before, After Tornado
By now, most if not all of us know what happened in Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday, May 22, 2011: the deadliest tornado in the modern era slashed across the city, killing at least 125 people. Now, a clever, interactive sleight of hand put together by The Hartford Courant enables readers to view the remarkable destruction in before-and-after satellite images.
The image above is a screen capture of the before and after photos. A slider that you control, visible in the middle of the photo, separates the two images on the interactive version of the page: slide it right and you can see a full screen image of what southeast Joplin looked like before the violent EF5 tornado hit; slide it left, and the before image disappears, revealing the carnage left behind. Right again, and the greenness of neighborhoods in late spring with trees full of leaves lining tidy streets, the high school standing proud, unfolds across the screen. Left again, and the life many Joplin residents knew peels away, replaced by block after block of brown debris and lifeless destruction, including the decimated high school. It’s like something out of The Wizard of Oz, only in reverse, and makes one wonder how it could be that more people weren’t killed.
Deadliest Tornado in Modern Era Slashes Missouri
It hasn’t even been a month since violent, history making tornadoes made headlines across the United States, and yet here we are with another grim tornado record. The death toll from the violent tornado that shredded as much as a third of Joplin, Missouri, Sunday evening reached 116 Monday afternoon. That makes it the single deadliest tornado to strike the United States since NOAA began keeping reliable records of tornado fatalities in 1950. It took the top spot from the Flint, Michigan, twister of June 8, 1953, which killed 115.
The number of dead in Joplin jumped from 89 earlier in the day as news of recoveries as well as rescues were reported. While the number of dead is fully anticipated to increase, news outlets reported that at least five missing families were found buried alive in the rubble, which stretches block after unrecognizable block across six miles of the southwestern Missouri city of 50,000. More than 500 people in Joplin were injured, and the damage is eerily familiar, looking so much like the utter carnage witnessed in Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011, when 65 died in that day’s twister.
The tornado event attributed to the single highest loss of life on American soil is the “Tri-State” tornado of March 18, 1925, which rampaged across southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and into southwestern Indiana. It killed 695 people on its seemingly unending 219-mile journey. But that was prior to our knowledge of families of tornadoes and the cyclical nature of long-lived supercell thunderstorms to form, mature, dissipate, and reform tornadoes, keeping damage paths seemingly continuous.
Prior to the effort by the U.S. Weather Bureau, precursor to the National Weather Service and NOAA, to maintain detailed accounts of tornadoes—and 64 years before yesterday’s event in Joplin—the last single-deadliest tornado in a long list of killer U.S. tornadoes was the 1947 Woodward, Oklahoma, tornado, which claimed 181 lives.
Yesterday there was also one fatality from a destructive tornado that hit Minneapolis, and that and Joplin’s toll combined with last month’s back-to-back tornado outbreaks, plus a handful of earlier tornado deaths this year, brings 2011’s death toll from tornadoes to 482—more than eight times the average of the past 50 years and second (in the modern era) only to the 519 recorded deaths from twisters in 1953. Two-thirds of this year’s fatalities occurred during April 27’s epic tornado outbreak across the South.
The Weather Channel has been providing continuing coverage of the rescue and recovery efforts in Joplin, with one of its crews arriving on scene moments after the tornado. The level of destruction in the city was too much to bear even for one of its seasoned on-air meteorologists. TWC also is reporting along with NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center on the possibility of yet another tornado outbreak, this time in the central Plains on Tuesday.
Observing Memphis Flooding from Above
The floodwaters of the Mississippi River continue their inexorable flow toward New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. Residents in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin–most of them, anyway–continue to pack up their belongings and evacuate their homes after the opening of the Morganza Spillway (video of the opening can be seen here), which is diverting 763,000 gallons of water per second from the bloated Mississippi, but now threatens the homes and properties of as many as 25,000 people in the Atchafalaya River basin.
Meanwhile, other communities are already starting the recovery process from the flooding. In Memphis, Tennessee, the river is slowly receding after unofficially cresting at 47.8 feet last Tuesday, the second-highest level ever recorded in the city (it reached 48.7 feet in 1937). The satellite images below were taken by the multispectral imaging sensor called the Thematic Mapper on NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite. The top image shows Memphis in April of 2010, while the bottom image was taken last Tuesday, at the height of the flooding, with the flood waters clearly visible on both sides of the river. About 1,500 people in the Memphis area have applied for FEMA assistance in the wake of the flooding. (Photos courtesy of NASA’s Earth Observatory; more satellite pictures of the flooding can be found here.)
