Seattle 2011

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.

Special Session Today on the 2010 Icelandic Volcano Eruptions

Iceland's eruptions, 2010: Getting close safely for measurements was one of the problems with observing the initial eruption conditions that affect plume dispersion modeling.

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland lasted from the 15 April to 25 May 2010.  In addition to threatening local people and their livestock, the volcano sent an ash plume to heights of up to 26,000 feet. Due to the weather conditions, the plume spread over a large part of Europe. Because volcanic ash can cause airplane engines to fail, the plume disrupted aviation over several weeks.
Weather Services played a key role in  predicting the spread of the ash and advising the aviation industry. The forecasts were based on safety thresholds for flying through volcanic ash set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) along with the national aviation authorities and aircraft manufacturers.
Scientists modelled the evolution of the ash cloud using dispersion  models and trajectory models. The model predictions were compared with  observations from satellites, aircraft and ground-based networks.
Supplemental ash concentration information from the UK Met Office

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull presented challenges to the meteorological community, especially in Europe.  The event highlighted the importance of enhanced international coordination to ensure a consistency of approach in the observation, forecasting and dissemination of volcanic ash information and warnings.
At the AMS annual meeting, papers covering the observing, forecasting and warning to the public and especially to the airline industry regarding the effects of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull will be presented today (Monday) at the Special International Applications Session 1B: The Eyjafjallajökull Volcanic Eruption of 2010 (1:30 pm). At 2 pm Ian Lisk of the UK Met Office talks about how the aviation industry, grounded by safety rules, put pressure on meteorologists to produce ash concentration charts to supplement the normal information from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in the UK. This was an added burden on dispersion modeling services (with the NAME model), but the results proved promising:

The largest uncertainty in the computer modelling of ash dispersion and transport is the ability to accurately reflect the status of the eruption at model initialization. This is less of a modelling issue and much more a case of being able to accurately and safely observe what the volcano is doing in real time, in particular, the:
•Height, diameter and time variance of eruptive column;
•Assessment of ash concentration and particle size/distribution;
•Ash deposition close to the volcano i.e. ash that is not available to be transported.

Unlike atmospheric phenomena, volcanic eruptions are in fixed places and don’t condense or disappear out of thin air, like atmospheric phenomena…but apparently observing them isn’t much easier.

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.

The Weather Quest winners: (L-r) Torey Farney, Gavin Chensue, Adam Atia, Camaron Plourde, and Leah Werner.

Not Sure What to Say? Talk about Uncertainty.

Since communication is the topic of the week, the new AMS draft statement on “Communicating Science” is never far from our minds during this meeting. The statement is available for comment until 2 February, which means discussions here could help shape that document.
Not surprisingly the statement addresses how AMS membership should communicate not only the “nature and practice of science” but also its results to a wide variety of nonscientific audiences.
One of the most challenging aspects of that communication is summed up baldly in the statement:

Uncertainty is not equivalent to not knowing.

Therein lies a major communication challenge, because the public expect scientists to “know” things by making confident predictions, like where the planet moves and which way things fall.
Yet uncertainty is built into the scientific process just as much as making successful predictions. Uncertainty fuels new experiments and hypotheses. It can be expressed mathematically. And it actually is increasingly a basis for sophisticated, probabilistic decision making tools. Says the draft statement:

In … studies of complex phenomena such as weather and climate, [uncertainty] may contribute to knowing more.

But:

This idea has not been adequately communicated to the public.

Worse yet, as practitioners of prediction, scientists look bad when they admit uncertainty:

In a world of sound bites and rapid-fire news coverage, scientists struggle with how to convey to the public the additional information contained in statements of uncertainty and probability without seeming less credible than other voices conveying the appearance of certainty.

Since uncertainty is at the soul of the scientific process as well as its products, communicating uncertainty is at the very heart of this week’s meetings. A Town Hall meeting on “The Role of the Forecaster in Probabilistic Decision Making” on Monday (24 January, 12:15 p.m., WSCC 606) continues the community follow-up to the 2006 National Research Council report, “Completing the Forecast: Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty.” In this case, forecasters face a double-whammy. Not only is uncertainty difficult and unwelcome, but, according to the AMS statement draft,

there exists in the public mindset distrust in the ability of models to provide useful information.

On Thursday (27 January, 11 a.m.-12:15 a.m., WSCC 611) we’ll get some concrete examples of overcoming these problems in a session on “Communicating Uncertainty,” part of the Second Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy.” Jeanne Schneider of USDA will open with “The Necessity of Communicating Uncertainty—Lessons from the Interface.” And Deborah Smith et al. of Remote Sensing Systems will talk about “Communicating Satellite MW Ocean Product Errors to a Variety of Users” at noon.
Of course many other presentations will touch on this topic one way or another. One thing is sure: uncertainty is a major part of this year’s discussions.

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.

The Unconventional Convention–A 'Curse' Put to Rest

An umbrella at the fountain.
Prepared for normal weather, precipitating contrary weather: all in a week's work for unconventional AMS meeting attendees.

Like snowflakes blowing in the winds of a blizzard, an ugly rumor had swirled through AMS Annual Meetings past. People…meteorologists, no less (you know who you are!), began saying that the convergence of so many meteorologists each year led to “bad” and sometimes “dangerous” weather in the host city.
The evidence was accumulating: flooding rain, mudslides, and severe storms in 2005 in perpetually sunny San Diego; crippling ice storms in 1978 and 2007 during the only two AMS visits to San Antonio; tornadoes in 1993 near Anaheim, California, while AMS huddled at Disneyland; and Mardi Gras parade in blasting winds and shivering chill during the 2006 Annual in New Orleans. We do not care to cite more.
On Saturday, however, with sunshine sneaking into the late January Seattle forecast, it seemed to be the right time to dispel this myth. Following the unremarkable weather a year ago in Atlanta, this week’s forecast is poised to further unstack the evidence against our maligned meteorological influences. The familiar light rain set to kick off the new week is supposed to gradually end and, as clouds thin and break up, full-fledged sunshine is expected beginning Tuesday and lasting the rest of the week. High temperatures are forecast to be near 60 degrees in the middle of the week, more than a dozen degrees above average.
Wow! Unusual, isn’t it? How about that—we don’t bring bad weather with us every year after all. Cliff Mass of the University of Washington seems emboldened enough to explain on his blog that this “dirty ridge” over the region is

This benign weather report is clearly due to the presence of thousands of meteorologists in town for the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society. The weather gods know not to cross us.

We’re not as confident as all that…not yet. Maybe the real stigma we can’t shake is the onset of unconventional weather–both good and not so good.
So, to all those mayors and city commissioners out there scheduled to host AMS Annual Meetings in the years to come, there’s no use in fretting. Maybe…just maybe…that wild winter weather you wish would abate will do so when the AMS comes to your town.

And Speaking of Fun…

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