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Fall 2019 CCM Newsletter

 

From the Chair

 

Dear CCM Colleagues,

 

2019 has thus far proven to be a busy and productive year for the BCCM. I would like to update you on the status of several activities:

 

1.The BCCM has confirmed Mark McGinnis to serve as Chair-elect in 2020. Mark will then be leading the CCM Board as Chair in 2021. Congratulations to Mark, and thank you for stepping in to this position!

 

2. The BCCM is pleased to welcome three new members who will begin their four-year terms at the close of the 2020 Annual Meeting. They are: Dr. Sam Miller of Plymouth, NH, Ms. Julie Gaddy of Germantown, MD, and Ms. Kathryn Prociv of New York, NY.

 

3. In September, the AMS Executive Council approved a proposal submitted by the BCCM to revise the technical report portion of the CCM exam process. The current "technical report" will be replaced with a "consulting report," in which the candidates are given a choice of three hypothetical consulting scenarios based on their defined areas of expertise. The candidate will choose one of the hypothetical scenarios and write a consulting report according to the given guidelines and format. The candidate will also have the option to submit a report of their own, provided it meets the guidelines. There will be at least 12 hypothetical scenarios in place at the time this change is implemented, and new scenarios can be added in the future to ensure that new or emerging areas of consulting meteorology are represented. It is anticipated that this change to the exam process will improve the process by clarifying the requirements of the technical (consulting) report, as well as allowing graders to more easily evaluate the candidate’s meteorological analysis and communication skills through the use of a predefined rubric. The new guidelines will go into effect beginning in 2020.

 

4. There has been quite a lot of activity in terms of CCM candidates thus far this year! We have had 13 exam submissions so far in 2019, as well as one from late in 2018. Of those, four have successfully passed the written exam and will move on to the oral exam portion of the exam, either at an upcoming AMS Annual Meeting or via a regional exam. Five exams have been returned by candidates and are in the grading phase, and five exams have been assigned to candidates and are expected to be turned in over the next 2 months. The CCM Board will be hard at work grading exams during the last quarter of 2019 to ensure that these candidates have the opportunity to appear for an oral exam in Boston, if at all possible.

 

5. The plans for our short course offering, “Becoming a Great CCM!” are well under way. The ACM has graciously agreed to sponsor the lunch. We are currently in the process of populating our tables with CCMs in various disciplines for group discussions to be held with students. If you plan to be in Boston and have some time on Sunday before the Presidential Forum, please contact Pam Knox if you will be available to assist with the short course.

 

As always, if you have interest in serving a term on the CCM Board, please reach out to , , incoming Chair for 2020, or , incoming chair-elect for 2020.

 

 

Alicia C. Wasula, PhD (CCM #711)

Chair, Board of Certified Consulting Meteorologists

American Meteorological Society

Contribute Your Career Profile!

 

 

The AMS is going to be adding Career Profiles to our revised Career Center site that will be launching soon, and we would like to include some of your profiles to populate the page upon launch. The CCM community has a huge variety of backgrounds and career paths that we think would be interesting to showcase to anyone interested in careers in the atmospheric and related sciences. If you have a moment, please consider .

 

We appreciate your help!

Roger Helvey: In Memoriam

Contributed by Jay Rosenthal, CCM

 

It is with great regret that I inform the community of the passing of Roger Helvey on July 31, 2019. Roger was the consummate meteorologist and scientist—always striving for perfection, precision, and new insights. With his preoccupation for uncovering subtleties in measurement errors (radiosonde, satellite-derived temperature data, and climatological statistics), he delved into the hidden meaning of data all his career, which included the Army at White Sands, and for decades as a civilian with the Navy at Point Mugu, CA.

 

As my colleague who never received the recognition he deserved (he didn't want attention and didn't like bureaucracy), he worked to uncover trends and deficiencies in data. His research for the Navy as a civilian meteorologist varied from conducting experiments, exploiting atmospheric properties to thwart vulnerabilities of potential terrorists, to using satellite-derived temperatures to identify signatures that affect radio/radar propagation conditions. His discovery of biases in existing databases had important meteorological and operational implications. He was always challenged by people who told him that "it couldn't be done." Whether it was on an Amiga, a laptop, or desktop computer, Roger could usually and eventually figure it out.

 

When he wasn't hovering over his many desks reserved for different projects well into the night, he was also an accomplished musician playing trombone for the Santa Barbara Symphony Orchestra along with his late wife, Lois. He loved his daughter Kathy (also deceased) and son Richie.

Professional Development Opportunities

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, 8 October 2019, 2:00 p.m. ET

 

Is your presentation an effective tool for communicating your results? Have you employed basic rules of graphic design in choosing the layout, text, and images? Presented by David Schultz and Bogdan Antonescu, this 30-minute webinar, organized by the , will help you design your presentation from scratch, taking into account the elements that contribute to effective communication. Next time, give your audience a memorable and persuasive presentation.

 

 

Thursday, 10 October 2019, 12:00 p.m. ET

 

 

Join the for a free webinar presented by Katie Pojorlie of the NWS Forecast Office, Rapid City, SD. This webinar provides a unique look at office culture and how it affects the work environment.

 

 

Tuesday, 15 October 2019, 11:00 a.m. ET

 

The AMS established the to serve as a resource for the development of early career professionals, both academic and in career, and to serve as a platform for early career involvement in a variety of AMS-sponsored activities. Though under ten years old, the Board has launched many initiatives to aid in professional development.

 

Presented by Jared Rennie and featuring Matt Lacke, Becky DePodwin, and Irene Sans, this webinar focuses on the creation of the board, what it is currently doing to serve young professionals within AMS, and where the Board is going as AMS enters its second centennial.

 

 

Wednesday, 13 November 2019, 2:00 p.m. ET

 

Staff members at AMS Headquarters on Joy St, 1948. Credit: AMS archives

 

In this webinar, organized by the , AMS Archivist Sophie Mankins will cover the AMS history timeline, including the history of local chapters. To get a good feel of the history being covered, refer to the that is currently being featured on the Centennial page.

 

New COMET Courses Available on MetEd

 

Over the course of the past three months, COMET published four new lessons offering training on GOES-16/JPSS satellite image interpretation, the forecast funnel and process, critical fire weather patterns, and the use of tropical watches and warnings to communicate wind risk. They also published three new lessons in Spanish (on wind measurement, statistics applied to climatology, and MCSs), as well as one in Greek (Buoyancy and CAPE).

 

English

 

 

 

 

 

Spanish

 

 

 

 

Greek

 

 

Currently, these materials are freely available to everyone, courtesy of COMET's primary sponsors. They are NOAA's NWS, NESDIS and NOS programs, EUMETSAT, the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, the Meteorological Service of Canada, Bureau of Meteorology, and the USACE and DOI/Reclamation.

 

Reminder: AMS Certification holders receive professional development points for completing COMET modules. See the for point values.

Reminder: Cast Your Vote in the AMS Election

 

Remember to vote in the for the 2020 AMS President-Elect and Council! The deadline to vote is 13 November 2019. We value and appreciate your voice as a member of the AMS community.

 

2020 AMS Minority Scholarship

 

The American Meteorological Society is pleased to announce the . Now entering its twenty-seventh year, the scholarship is intended to help support college education for minority students traditionally underrepresented in the sciences, especially Hispanic/Latino, American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African American, and Native Hawaiian students, who intend to pursue careers in the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences. The two-year scholarships, funded through donations made by members to the AMS 100th Anniversary Program, are for $3000 during the freshman year and $3000 during the sophomore year (sophomore year funding depends on successful completion of the freshman academic year). Minority students who will be entering their freshman year of college in the fall of 2019 are eligible to apply.

 

Thanks to your assistance, we have had a successful twenty-six years. Since the inception of the program, we have awarded the scholarships to over one hundred fifty outstanding students. I hope that all of you will assist us again in distributing information about this valuable program. Access to the information and application can be found .

 

Information on all AMS fellowship and scholarship programs can be found .

 

If you have any questions, please send an e-mail to or call 617-226-3907. Thank you for your time and support!

Why I Believe in the Science Explaining Anthropogenic Global Warming

Contributed by Bruce A. Egan, Sc.D.,CCM

 

For several years I have shared with friends and family why I have become so concerned about anthropogenic climate change and our need to aggressively address it as a society.

 

My first thought-provoking discussion of climate change was at a project meeting at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto in the early 1980s. The meeting was about our work on long range transport modeling of sulfate transport across the U.S.

 

In casual conversation during a lunch break, one of the staff researchers stated: “If the greenhouse gas mechanisms for warming the atmosphere we think may be valid, the effects will show up first in the Arctic."

 

The statement was a hypothesis based only upon theoretical considerations and a prediction that could only be verified by future scientific observations, associated model verification efforts and importantly, the passage of time. The statement was made well before climate change science became part of a national debate involving political posturing. The researcher was referring to what is now described as the Arctic Amplification effect: the feedback mechanism whereby the melting of ice cover exposes soil or water having a lower albedo which leads to even greater surface heating caused by greenhouse gas mechanisms.

 

I squirreled the statement away in the back of my mind only to have it emerge to the forefront many times in future years as research efforts initiated by the USA and European nations reported accelerated melting of the polar ice cap.

 

A decade later, the 1998 NOAA Arctic Report Card clearly confirmed the scientific hypothesis. The more extensive findings of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports (ARs) have extended the understanding of the science with observational measurements of the atmosphere, ocean temperatures, sea level rise, and additional environmental and negative ecological effects on a global scale.

 

NOAA initiated their annual Arctic Report Card in 2006. The most recent of 2018, reveals that peak air and water temperatures are several degrees higher than earlier and show extremes not seen before. Also, melting of the polar cap has accelerated over the span of just a few years. These findings confirm the relevance of the above hypothetical statement.

 

Kerry Emanuel in Climate Science and Climate Risk: A Primer (2016) states that "if a hypothesis succeeds in explaining not only observations and especially if it successfully predicts what has not yet been observed, the hypothesis may advance to the status of a theory. In science, theory pertains to a principle or set of principles that have been convincingly well established.”

 

Every year the observational data supporting anthropogenic climate change is more convincing and certainly now convincing enough for meteorologists and scientists to insist that actions be taken to mitigate effects.

Upcoming Meetings

 

12–16 January 2020, Boston, MA

 

10–15 May 2020, New Orleans, LA

 

12–14 May 2020, Palm Springs, CA

 

1–3 June 2020, Minneapolis, MN

 

13–18 July 2020, Park City, UT

LinkedIn

The CCM LinkedIn page is becoming more active. If you have not joined, please do! The LinkedIn page is accessible and open only to CCMs. You must join LinkedIn (it is free) first before requesting to join the CCM page. Once you join LinkedIn (or if you are already a member), then just simply type “Certified Consulting Meteorologist” in the search box on the top right to search for our group. The LinkedIn site is an easy way for CCMs to communicate with each other and to keep abreast of news, developments, and items of interest.

Facebook

For all CCMs, colleagues, and the general public, we have a CCM Facebook page. It can be found by searching in Facebook for “Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM).” This page needs much more interest to be generated, beginning with every CCM “liking” the page.

Twitter

For all CCMs, colleagues, and the general public, we also have a Twitter account. If you are on Twitter, please follow the handle @AMS_BCCM and use it to promote your activities and events.

Thanks to all of our contributors for this issue

 

We encourage you to share your experiences, views, findings, or studies for the next newsletter. E-mail your articles to and . This newsletter as well as past issues are available .

 

The Winter 2019 Newsletter submission deadline is 15 December 2019.
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