National Weather Service offices in Missouri and Kansas recently initiated an experiment testing new tornado warnings that combine more specific information with more descriptive language than have been used in the past to describe the potential effects of storms. The experiment is called “Impact Based Warning,” and is meant to bluntly tell residents in the path of tornadoes what could result if they don’t seek shelter. By using phrases such as “complete destruction” and “unsurvivable if shelter not sought below ground,” the NWS is hoping to “better convey the threat and elevate the warning over a more typical warning,” according to Dan Hawblitzel of the Pleasant Hill, Missouri NWS office.

The new alerts got their first big test last weekend when more than 100 twisters were reported in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Iowa. While the NWS’s Storm Prediction Center issued a warning of possible life-threatening storms in several midwestern states days before they touched down, in Kansas the words used in the new alerts were particularly trenchant: “You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Many well-built homes and businesses will be completely swept from their foundations.” And the warnings seem to have worked. Despite the large number of storms, only six people were killed—all in an overnight tornado that hit Woodward, Oklahoma. In Wichita, Kansas, a twister tore through a mobile-home park during nighttime hours, but there were no fatalities.

The Impact Based Warning experiment was developed by the NWS in consultation with social scientists. Along with the new vernacular, it includes some key additions to regular tornado warnings, including information that identifies the hazard (hail, winds, tornado, etc.), indicates whether the hazard has been spotted by radar or by people on the ground, and describes potential effects of the hazard (loss of life, damage to trees or buildings, etc.). The warnings can be used not only for tornadoes, but also to signify life- or property-threatening thunderstorms. The experiment is scheduled to run through the end of November, at which point it will be evaluated and considered for more widespread use.

The initiative comes  just one year after tornadoes killed more than 500 people in the United States—the deadliest season in almost 60 years. The 2011 year in tornadoes is examined in the new AMS book, Deadly Season: Analysis of the 2011 Tornado Outbreaks, by Kevin M. Simmons and Daniel Sutter. The book is a follow-up to the authors’ Economic and Societal Impacts of Tornadoes, published by AMS in 2011. The new title looks at possible factors contributing to the outcomes of 2011 tornado outbreaks, including assessments of Doppler radar, storm warning systems. and early recovery efforts. Both books can be purchased here.

In 2005 researchers from NCAR and the University of Colorado decided to change the weather community. They started a program called, “Weather and Society*Integrated Studies”, or WAS*IS. As the name implies, what “was” is no longer good enough. This unique program started with a workshop aimed to entice physical and social scientists to enter a room because of their separate agendas, yet emerge having formed unexpected alliances in solving common problems. The workshop quickly grew into a grassroots movement. That movement is now a revolution in progress, facing its greatest challenge so far.

WAS*IS encourages students, researchers, and practitioners in the weather community to see that they can make progress by taking interdisciplinary approaches. Organizers realized that meteorologists have burning questions that require social science methods, and social scientists often have questions that require physical science understanding. This required a fundamental shift in the way we approach the goals of the meteorological community. Julie Demuth of NCAR and her colleagues explained in the November 2007 BAMS,:

…the ultimate purpose of weather forecast information is to help users make informed decisions, yet much remains to be done to translate
weather forecast information to societal benefits and impacts. To work toward this goal, a closer connection
between meteorological research and societal needs is essential, because problems are not meteorological or societal alone.

This simple notion spread collaboration like a wildfire.

By the time of the BAMS article, some 80 people had become WAS*IS denizens, pursuing projects that fuse meteorological and societal expertise.Demuth et al. took the unusual step of listing every one of these participants and affiliations in their article. There was a method to the rolodex approach: as a grassroots endeavor, WAS*IS was looking to hook up likeminded people–to create a community within a community that would share ideas and identify holes in the knowledge. As anyone who has done interdisciplinary research will tell you, five years ago was still the dark ages for support for integrating social scientists in meteorological work. Acritical mass of demand needed to be created; the hope was that readers would see who was involved and get in touch, fueling more questions and more interdisciplinary projects and more clamoring for changes in funding and attitudes toward research and services.

Already, just five years later, the WAS*IS community numbers some 276 people, many of them just starting out careers, searching for ways to connect the physical sciences with the social sciences, undaunted by the funding landscape they’d inherited.

With no money to give out, the revolution could promise cameraderie. WAS*IS, says AMS Policy Director William Hooke, “was the portal, the gateway, to a transforming experience”:

You’d be encouraged to join other entry-level professionals who had participated in an intense one-week dialog bringing together meteorologists and social scientists, helping them bridge their respective disciplines, network, and start projects that they could (and would, and continue to) build on over years.

Sound good? It was. The couple of hundred people who participated never stop talking about it, sharing their experience and their hopes and aspirations with the likes of you and me. They’ve come from the ranks of weather service forecasters. From broadcast meteorologists. From research scientists. From economics. Psychology. Sociology. They’ve caught the fever.

And they’re still changing our community. They provided part of the interest in and some of the traction and juice behind the NOAA National Weather Service thrust toward a Weather-Ready Nation.

Now for the bump in the road part. Earlier this week Jeff Lazo, director of NCAR’s Societal Impacts Program, sent out disturbing news:

Due to the tough budget times and NOAA’s choices about the allocation of their funds, we regret to say that external funding of the Collaborative Program on the Societal and Economic Benefits of Weather Information (aka the Societal Impacts Program) has been discontinued.

We have thus discontinued or suspended non-research related activities including WAS*IS, the Societal Impacts Discussion Board, the Weather and Society Watch, the Extreme Weather Sourcebook, and other information resources. As such we will be “taking down” these webpages as we will not be able to maintain them.

The Societal Impacts Program Discussion Board will be reinvented very shortly as a community service supported by Rebecca Morss here at NCAR. Please look for a message from her in the next week or so as we hope that a new incarnation of the board comes back online.

Hooke writes that it “is a tremendous loss”, but points out that

Meteorologists and social scientists trying to spin up the Weather-Ready Nation must choose whether to be deflated by this news or soldier on. It won’t be easy. Ironically, the sense of shared community and common purpose fostered by WAS*IS gives all parties a fighting chance to succeed.

Indeed, the Weather Ready Nation concept pushed by NOAA right now could prove to be the break that the revolution was looking for. Now fringe ideas are central to the goals of the entire weather enterprise; people in the halls of government are reaching for insights from neglected fringes. The cause of WAS*IS may have left the streets to be taken up by the establishment itself.

A doctoral student at the University of Michigan has created a sonic representation of the intense solar storm that erupted in early March. Robert Alexander gathered 90 hours of raw data from two NASA spacecraft–the MESSENGER and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Through isomorphic mapping, he applied that data to an audio waveform. The resulting sound lasted only a fraction of a second, so Alexander used algorithms to extend the playback length. The final soundtrack portrays a cacophony of  solar particles emitted by the storm as they slammed into the spacecraft. Listen for yourself in the clip below.

by James Stalker, CEO, RESPR, Inc., and Chair, R&D/Testbeds Working Group for the AMS Ad Hoc Committee on a Nationwide Network of Networks

The National Research Council (NRC) report, titled “Observing the Weather and Climate From the Ground Up: A Nationwide Network of Networks (2009),” provided the vision and inspiration for building a team of volunteers from across all three sectors (government, academia, and private) that investigated the
suggestions recommended in the report. This team, comprising six (6) working groups (Organization and Business Models, Architecture, Measurements and Infrastructure, Metadata Policy, R&D and Testbeds, and Human Dimension), spent more than two years considering how to refine the recommendations and tackle the challenges identified in the original NRC report. They also identified other challenges in shaping this type of Nationwide Network of Networks (NNoN), which will be of critical importance to our country’s weather-ready future.

This volunteer team has published additional recommendations compiled into a draft report available at the American Meteorological Society website. Several drafts of this team’s report had been made available to the larger weather and climate enterprise community for comments over many months. The most recent and final version of the report reflects the community input. The readers of this blog are encouraged to read this final report and provide their comments to the Committee Chair and/or any of the Working Group Chairs of the Ad Hoc Committee on Network of Networks.

These volunteer efforts, to date, have certainly tried to solidify the interest of the various stakeholders in a network of this magnitude and of national importance but a lot more work remains to be undertaken. Unfortunately, many challenges remain unresolved. For example, wide-spread support hasn’t been secured for the idea of a central authority for an organizing body of the NNoN. Despite the best efforts by the volunteer team, an appealing organization and business model for such a central body has not been settled on going forward. Other challenges include establishing how to:

1. make this organizing body an autonomous body that is not unduly influenced by any one sector,
2. make this body a financially sustainable entity in the long run,
3. reach all the major stakeholders and get them to support this idea and contribute to its success.

With respect to the third challenge listed above, many of the sought-after stakeholders may not be actively engaged in the weather and climate enterprise community activities and so finding effective ways to reach them becomes an even bigger challenge.

On a positive note, however, the NNoN efforts are going to be discussed again and support will be sought at the AMS Washington Forum in April 2012 and also at the Summer Community Meeting in August 2012 in Norman, Oklahoma. These two venues should prove quite useful for any interested Weather and Climate Enterprise participant and other stakeholders in the overarching effort to build a national asset that the current and many future generations will help nurture and benefit from.

Microbes may be small, but they shouldn’t be ignored when considering global climate.  According to a new colloquium report from The American Academy of Microbiology, microbes such as bacteria, algae, and fungi play a powerful role in the Earth’s climate.  “Incorporating Microbial Processes into Climate Models” notes how the impact of microbes on the atmosphere goes way back in time. The critical mix of carbon dioxide and oxygen we take for granted as sustaining life on the planet is due to the rise of these tiny creatures eons ago.

So what specifically do these minute forms of life have to do with climate today? According to the report, the answer is plenty.  “The sum total of their activity is enormous. But of course not all microbes are the same—some of them are producing oxygen, others are consuming it. Some are taking carbon dioxide out of the air, others are adding it.”

The big questions that the report asks and plans to address by incorporating microbial processes into climate change models: what’s the overall effect of microbial activities on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Is it possible this activity will absorb the carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere? Or will the rising global temperature might spur microbes to produce even more carbon dioxide?

The authors recognize that the gap between the climatology and microbiology is large, but they say it is not insurmountable. Some of the same technologies used to collect data for climate models—satellite imaging of cloud cover and precipitation, submarine cables that monitor changes in temperature and salinity, sensors to retrieve real-time data from remote locations—can also be applied to measuring biological phenomena. Collaboration between the sciences, they believe, will benefit both fields.

A more detailed look at the report is available here.

There is a growing urgency to produce global projections of how a warming climate could affect life on Earth.

“Impact research is lagging behind physical climate sciences,” says Pavel Kabat, director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. “Impact models have never been global, and their output is often sketchy. It is a matter of responsibility to society that we do better.”

Time is running out for researchers hoping to contribute impact simulations to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (scheduled for publication in 2014). So last month, the IIASA and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) started a project to compare climate-impact models collected from more than two dozen research groups in eight countries. The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) will integrate climate data from state-of-the-art models, using a range of greenhouse-gas emission scenarios (models used in the project can be found here). Because the various emissions scenarios result in a range of projected global temperature increases, potential impacts also can vary widely across a range of scenarios. It is hoped that the project will clarify systematic biases that can cause models to produce disparate results.

The models will investigate the effects of climate change on global agriculture, water supplies, vegetation, and health. Results are due by July 1, and reports on each of the four impact areas are scheduled to be completed by January of 2013. This means the data could be available for the IPCC’s next report–which “will make a real difference for the assessment process,” notes Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science, cochair of IPCC Working Group II. “I greatly appreciate the initiative required to get this activity underway, and I appreciate the commitment to fast-track components that will yield results in time for inclusion in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.”

The ISI-MIP is scheduled to continue into 2013 and could be expanded to analyze climatic impacts on transport and energy infrastructures.

A model developed by PIK combined precipitation and temperature projections from 19 general circulation models to predict global vegetation loss. The results are shown in this map under two different warming scenarios.

In a paradox that it seems only nature can muster—like quelling a year-long drought in the western two-thirds of Texas with record snows—it turns out that warming going on in the Arctic this winter is the likely culprit behind killer cold and snow that had been plaguing Eastern Europe since late January. And it is now also likely linked to the colder-than-normal winter occurring in Japan and Western Asia.

Weather patterns since the fall have set up in such a way as to leave large expanses of Arctic Ocean, particularly the Barents and Kara Seas north of Scandinavia and Russia, nearly ice-free. In fact, an image from early February posted to the Arctic Sea Ice Blog shows this area north of the Arctic Circle as open water for the first time in what it refers to as the “new Arctic regime (2005-present),” when it should be completely frozen over.

The changing weather patterns resulting from this new era of record sea ice melt seem to have helped build up a huge helping of frigid air over Siberia that came crashing southward as soon as the storm track shifted, which it inevitably does throughout the year. Instead of Western Europe like the last two winters, this time the bitter cold targeted Eastern Europe, delivering snow-laden storms to nations of the Eastern Mediterranean and even North Africa, as well as far Western Asia, Korea, and Japan.

Numerous researchers have been working the last few years to figure out what’s going on. The environmental news and technology site Bits of Science wrote a timely online article explaining the findings of recent published research and then tying the studies to the different teleconnections patterns that influence Eurasia’s winter weather — the Arctic Oscillation and its focused cousin, the North Atlantic Oscillation. Together, these pressure anomaly-driven climate patterns can dictate where winter’s worst cold and snow and best warmth become established.

A new study headed for publication in the Journal of Climate in March further extends the influence of the warming Arctic. The article by the Research Institute for Global Change’s Jun Inoue et al. contends that the storm track over the Barents and Lara Seas takes a more northerly route when sea ice there is reduced. In a positive feedback mechanism, the northward-shifted storm track pulls warm air over the Arctic Ocean. At the same time, cold air builds over Siberia and the Norwegian coast, and becomes poised to spill southward, or to the west and the east.

Sea-level pressure anomaly (hPa) and typical cyclone paths (red arrow: light-ice years, blue arrow: heavy-ice years). In the light-ice years, the cyclone path shifts northward and the Siberian High expands up to the Arctic coast.

“Such warm Arctic and cold continental conditions are referred to as a warm-Arctic cold-Siberian (WACS) anomaly, and the WACS anomaly could be a procurer of severe weather in the downstream region,” the authors report.

As with the collective research on the warming Arctic’s influence on mid-latitude winter weather, Inoue et al. conclude that using sea-ice variability from this region of the Arctic would improve the reliability of the seasonal weather predictions in individual years.

by Ray Ban, Andrea Bleistein, and Paul Croft, of the AMS Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication (CICCC)

Most AMS Members apparently agree that there is conflict among their colleagues in the Society on the issue of climate change. Those who perceive the conflict on this issue generally see it as at least a partly or somewhat positive thing, but at least some of them—29%, feel reluctance to bring up the topic of global warming at AMS meetings and functions.

Despite the perception of conflict, 82% of voting Members feel AMS should help to educate the public about global warming and 67% think AMS should help educate policy makers about it.

In fact, Members themselves are already involved in this outreach. They are spending significant time educating the public and policy makers about climate change—the median is 10 hours for this past year, and the mean is 55 hours!

Those are some of the key preliminary findings so far from our recent survey of AMS voting Members, e-mailed in December 2011. The survey was a collaboration between our committee, CICCC, and Dr. Ed Maibach at George Mason University. We asked all 7,197 AMS voting Members about their varied perspectives about climate change. Specifically, we hoped to learn about Members’ assessment of the evidence, perception of conflict among our members, views about AMS’s role in public education, and personal involvement in public education activities.

With a response rate of 26%, the survey results may not be easy to extrapolate to the membership as a whole. Nonetheless, we’ve made the preliminary results, which have been vetted by CICCC members and GMU researchers, available for you on the AMS website.

The AMS Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise established CICCC in early 2011 to facilitate communication among members of the weather and climate community so as to foster greater understanding about the spectrum of views on climate change. In addition to evaluating responses, the Committee and its partners held two workshops at the 2012 AMS Annual Meeting to facilitate dialogue about climate change within the AMS membership. More such events are planned for the near future.

The United States Department of Agriculture recently released a map of U.S. planting zones to help gardeners across the country determine what they can and can’t grow. It’s the first new map since 1990, and the changes from the previous map reflect climate variability and change over the last 22 years.

The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

The new map is based on average annual extreme minimum temperatures from 1976 to 2005, whereas the previous map used data from the years 1974-1986. Average temperatures throughout the U.S. were about two-thirds of a degree (F) higher in the more recent time span then they were from 1974 to 1986. As a result, the zones have shifted, and many locations around the country are now in warmer zones than they were on the previous map. Some states, such as Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska, have almost completely migrated to a warmer zone. Of the 34 cities highlighted in the 1990 map, 18 are in warmer zones in the updated version of the map. In general, much of the U.S. is about one-half zone warmer in the new map than in the 1990 edition.

The 2012 version of the planting zones map is the first that is GIS-based. Additionally, a new algorithm used for the 2012 edition enabled more accurate interpolation between weather reporting stations, and the new map also accounts for factors such as elevation changes and proximity to bodies of water, which led to more accurate mapping of the zones. Data used to create the map came from a total of 7,983 stations in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, including stations of the National Weather Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Bureau of Land Management, Environment Canada, and the Global Historical Climate Network.

An in-depth overview of the new map was published in February’s Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. An interactive version of the map and more features can be found here.

by Jack Fellows and Paul Higgins

Every year the AMS and UCAR together send one member of our community to work for a member of Congress or a congressional committee through its congressional science fellowship program. The deadline for applying for next year’s fellowship is rapidly approaching, so consider now how this opportunity could enhance your career while giving you a chance to help shape the future.

The program has two goals: (1) to ensure that Congressional policy makers have ready access to the best available scientific information; and (2) to provide policy experiences for community members who think they’d like to pursue a policy career (i.e., develop key decision makers for the future).

David Reid-Miller, the 2010-2011 AMS/UCAR Congressional Fellow, served as a Legislative Fellow in Sen. Mark Udall’s (D-CO) office advising him on an array of energy issues.  David says of the experience: “The deadlines were often fast and usually changing – and the request never the same.  Whether it was clean energy R&D at DOE, fossil fuel subsidies, developing renewable energy on public lands, or crafting the DOD Energy Security Act – I not only learned how to balance the many interests in a “purple” state like Colorado, but I gained enormous insight into the policymaking process and expertise in a range of topics outside my dissertation research.  It was a phenomenal experience – the only regret about it is that it only lasted one year!”

The Fellows bring to the Congress new insights, fresh ideas, extensive knowledge, and education in a variety of disciplines. Not only are the Fellows provided with the opportunity to make a significant public service contribution, but they also obtain firsthand experience in the legislative and political process. Fellows gain a perspective which, ideally, should help them understand how the research community effectively communicates with the larger society on important national policy issues. Fellows may have the opportunity to make significant contributions to public policy making within Congress on disaster preparedness and response, global change, water and energy policy, defense technologies, AIDS, pollution, communications technologies, and many other issues.

The AMS/UCAR fellowship is managed along with over 30 other professional science societies by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  The AAAS reports that these fellowship programs continue to have significant impact based on: (1) the number of Fellows has increased over the years; (2) there are many more congressional requests for possible assignments than there are Fellows; (3) former Fellows are assuming senior positions in Congress, the Executive Branch, academia, and in the private sector; (4) overall, large numbers of qualified individuals continue to apply to the various sponsoring organizations for the fellowships; and (5) reports from the Congress about individual Fellows and the program have been highly laudatory.

What Fellows Do.  Fellows perform every type of work normally asked of the permanent congressional staff, whether they are in members’ offices or with committees. The range of activities is illustrated by these examples:

• Assist in preparation of major parts of legislation from preliminary agency reviews to House-Senate conferences and final enactment into law;
• Work on legislative and oversight activities on budgets for various agencies, such as NOAA, NASA, EPA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Defense;
• Assist with oversight investigations into major national problems such as global change, hazardous wastes, natural disasters, ground water, acid rain, etc.;
• Help prepare Members for debates on the floors of the House and Senate;
• Write speeches and other materials for Members on a wide range of topics;
• Provide liaison and coordination with committees to which a Member is assigned;
• Give briefings and arrange for public hearings; and,
• Meet with lobbyists, members of the public, agency representatives, and many others.

For example, Kim Mueller, the 2011-2012 AMS/UCAR Congressional Fellow, is currently serving with the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resource Committee. As part of her assignment on the committee, Kim primarily works on climate change issues, helping to organize briefings for staff and members of Congress, preparing members of the Committee for hearings and events, and researching climate change legislation. Kim also participated in the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban South Africa last month.

Fellowship Term, Stipend, Administration, and Application.  Fellowships usually run from September through August. The stipend for the Fellow is $55,000, plus allowances toward relocation, in-service travel, and health and dental insurance premiums. AAAS organizes a two-week orientation period in Washington in early September. This orientation includes seminars on the Congress and the Executive Branch; meetings with former Fellows, members of Congress, and staff; and preparing for placement in the Congress. There will be over 30 Fellows in the class, sponsored by over two dozen different societies. Following orientation and interviews on Capitol Hill, the AMS/UCAR Fellow will select a position in the House or Senate. Throughout the year, the AMS/UCAR Fellow will join with other AAAS Fellows in participating in seminars, and social and other class activities sponsored by the AAAS. The AMS/UCAR Fellow will also be invited to attend and report on his or her activities at AMS and UCAR meetings.

We strongly encourage you to apply – see http://www.ametsoc.org/csf.  Applications are due to the AMS by March 15, 2012!