Summer 2020 CCM Newsletter | |
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From the Chair
Dear CCM Colleagues,
What a crazy spring it has been! In my Spring newsletter column, we were looking forward to another busy and profitable year and had barely registered the impending pandemic that has swept the nation and the world since then, and is still affecting all of us. Since I work for a university, my day job has been secure, although I am working from home, but all of my forensic CCM work has stopped because of the shuttering of courts around the nation. For those of you who do consulting work full-time, I know this has been a trying time for you. I can only hope that our attempts to “flatten the curve” are successful and will allow us to get back to our normal work soon.
I am starting to see calls for sessions and papers for the next AMS annual meeting, which is scheduled to be held in New Orleans on January 10–14, 2021. I know the AMS leadership is watching the progression of the pandemic very carefully and weighing what to do about the meeting but I am hopeful that it will go ahead as scheduled if it can be done safely. For now, the time at home can be used to catch up on work and to think about papers and posters you might want to present at the meeting. For most sessions, the usual abstract deadline is August 1, although you should check the schedule to make sure you have the correct one for your conference.
So far in 2020, the CCM Board has received 15 applications from CCM candidates, and I have received inquiries from several other potential candidates. The BCCM graders are really going to get a workout in the next few months as those written exams come in! One written exam has been turned in and should be graded soon, and two other candidates are waiting to take oral exams when that becomes possible. Because of the need to take precautions and avoid close contact, we have put one regional oral exam on hold for now. We are also in the process of setting up procedures to do virtual oral exams and have worked with Kelly Savoie and others to determine the best way to handle the process. I anticipate that we will be doing trial runs in late June and early July and should be ready to give our first “real” virtual oral exam in August. We are also updating the slide set used in the first part of the oral exam to add extra specialties; those should be available for candidates on future oral exams.
As you know, the BCCM is responsible for adjudicating the Henry T. Harrison Award for achievement by a consulting meteorologist. The award “was established to recognize a consulting meteorologist for outstanding contributions to the profession, clients, and society. Nominees should demonstrate expertise in weather or climate and their applications, adherence to ethical behavior, and a high level of service to clients and/or the weather and climate enterprise.” The BCCM has reviewed the nomination packages for this year and has made its recommendation—the announcement will be made upon AMS's approval. If you know of a deserving individual, please consider preparing a nomination package for 2021. Nominations are due to the AMS by May 1.
Please feel free to contact me with any comments, questions, or concerns. As a reminder, if you are interested in being considered for a Board position in the future, please contact either me or the chair-elect, Mark McGinnis. I wish you the best as you navigate this difficult time and looking forward to improving conditions in the next quarter.
Pam Knox (CCM #587)
Chair, Board of Certified Consulting Meteorologists
American Meteorological Society
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Association of Certified Meteorologists
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Contributed by Tim Hall, ACM President
The Association of Certified Meteorologists (ACM) is an independent professional association for AMS credentialed CCMs serving in the private sector. Our overarching goal is the increase the stature of the individual CCM whether they own a consulting business or are embedded within a larger firm. Our members consult in a wide range of industries ranging from aerospace to air quality and forensics. Our vision is to be the premier, internationally recognized association for CCMs.
Recently, the ACM has completed a strategic planning process and updated our statement of purpose (i.e., mission statement). The ACM’s mission is to:
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Promote professional standards to uphold the dignity and honor of meteorological consulting through the application of sound scientific principles and ethical business practices
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Serve society by providing thought leadership on issues of international significance relevant to the practice of professional meteorology
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Increase the stature of AMS credentialed, private sector Certified Consulting Meteorologists (CCMs) to advance the business interests of members by engaging their government and commercial client segments
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Create opportunities for networking, development of business partnerships, and peer mentoring with ACM colleagues to advance the business interests of members and their organizations
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Cooperate with other weather, climate and water related professional societies to promote meteorological consulting best practices and the interests of constituent private sector CCMs
If you are interested in joining ACM, please click on the “Join ACM” link
on our website or contact us.
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A Healthy “Bust” – Biting Your Pride
Contributed by Dan Schreiber, CCM
A fellow meteorologist that I am in routine contact with is a Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service. One day, before I got to know him well, I attended a lecture that he was giving to the general public about storm spotting. During his lecture, he showed a picture of baseball-sized hail that pummeled a city in his jurisdiction. Without even stuttering, he plainly explained that his team had totally missed that forecast. I about fell out of my seat.
At the time, I understood that occasionally busting a severe weather forecast happens; I had done it myself. That wasn’t what floored me. What really got me was the very unprovoked, nonchalant admission – to the general public at the lecture – that the meteorologists responsible for warning of severe weather were caught with their pants down. Why was he admitting this to a bunch of laymen?
It took me a few years and many more conversations with him to understand exactly what his aim was. By admitting that his team failed a severe weather event, he not only brought to light the fact that the meteorology science is still not perfect, but he also set a reasonable expectation for all meteorologists – we’re just simply going to bust a forecast every once in a while.
It really got me thinking about how honest I was as a meteorologist. Sure, between trusted colleagues, I may admit a shortfall occasionally, but certainly not to my clients and customers – they needed to have 100% faith in me, right? Wrong. I realized, after several years, that by creating the profile of the “perfect weatherman”, I was setting an unrealistic expectation for our profession, that would eventually fail, and fail dangerously.
As a forecaster, I don’t want my clients to have 100% faith in my forecast, because I know that I’m not going to be correct 100% of the time. Instead, I want my customers to have 100% faith in my abilities, with the understanding that sometimes, weather just happens. There needs to be a tad bit of personal responsibility and preparedness on the part of the client, just in case I’m wrong.
A busted forecast here and there can be healthy. It may not be pretty at the moment, and it should never be due to negligence, but nonetheless, it reminds everyone about how volatile the forces of nature are that we’re dealing with.
Give yourself a little wiggle-room, and be honest with your clients. It’s liberating, and it’s ultimately the safer, and wiser, thing to do.
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Social Media Ethics for the Meteorologist
Contributed by Gerry Mulvey, CCM
The speed of communications across the globe continues to accelerate as do the challenges meteorologists face navigating the world of social media. Gerry Mulvey, CCM, Kristina Deleon, and Brad Sower, CBM, from the University of the Incarnate Word and News 4 San Antonio (WOAI) have joined forces to provide a path to help guide meteorologists in their social media encounters. The latest article on ethics, available as an early online release is entitled "Social Media Ethics for the Meteorologist." It is scheduled to be published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
This is the seventh in a series of articles encouraged by the BCCM and exploring ethical issues. This one focuses on the planning for, identification, and response to social media comments. The first article in this series was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2012.
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Technical Management
Contributed by William W. Vaughan, CCM
Technical management is a matter that we all CCMs get involved with sooner or later. Dr. Von Braun was invited in 1962 to give what turned out to be a highly acclaimed presentation on the subject that he prepared for a national management conference. The conference was held two years after the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center was started with him as the Director. The presentation on management sounds just like him and reflects the management philosophy he used during the development of the Saturn V Launch Vehicle which enabled our successful transportation of the first men to the moon. A total of 17 Saturn vehicles were launched during the testing and operational phase with not a single loss.
If you are interested in Dr. Von Braun's management presentation, you can find a transcript online.
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Meteorological Standards and You
Contributed by Paul M. Fransioli, CCM
If I were still on the CCM Board, one question I might suggest for the oral exam would be – “how important to you are Meteorological Standards?” A blank stare for a response might not help a candidate's overall grade. Continue with this short article for extra credit. Two thoughts that every CCM should know:
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Meteorological consensus standards perform a crucially important role in acquiring and analyzing weather data for applications such as environmental analyses and regulatory compliance, forensic weather analyses, wind engineering, aviation weather, and more. Some standards are foundation reference documents in government agency monitoring guidance documents.
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Maintaining, improving and developing new consensus standards relies on input from instrument and user experts defining the appropriate terminology, testing methods and operational specifications suited for a stated scope of purposes. Currently, the pool of such expertise is shrinking in a participation drought.
Ken Underwood, CCM, and
I presented “Quality Assurance in Meteorological Measurements for Environmental Applications: Past, Present and Future” in the 18th Historical Symposium at the 2020 Annual AMS Meeting; you may want to check it out. My ASTM committee colleague Raul Dominguez from South Coast Air Quality Management District and I have a session approved for the 2021 Annual meeting: “Meteorological Measurements Standardization Needs”. We plan for it to include presentations on forward-thinking ways to strengthen and improve this process.
CCMs are known for going the extra distance to uphold the quality and defensibility of our work. I encourage you to consider for yourself and your staff to participate in the Standards process. Review information on the ASTM meteorological standards by a simple search on www.astm.org, or contact me directly for information.
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Guidelines for Cloud Seeding to Augment Precipitation
The upcoming fourth edition of Guidelines for Cloud Seeding to Augment Precipitation, will be published by the American Society of Civil Engineers within the next year.
The third release of the manual, edited by Conrad G. Keyes Jr., George W. Bomar, Thomas P. DeFelice, Don A. Griffith, and Darin W. Langerud, appeared in 2016 and supplies the practical details for implementing a cloud seeding project to enhance precipitation efficiency. This technology for atmospheric water management provides a cost-effective means for supplementing available water supplies and reducing damage caused by meteorological events. The manual is intended for use by consulting engineers and scientists working on water issues and by instructors of agricultural and civil engineering, hydrology, and environmental and agricultural sciences.
Contributed by Don A. Griffith, CCM
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A Severe Weather Damage Assessment
A significant severe weather outbreak occurred across the southeastern United States, including two major (EF4) tornadoes impacting Mississippi, a tally of 25 tornadoes across central Alabama, and continued severe weather and tornadoes through Georgia and Carolina's. NASA and NOAA researchers obtained polar-orbiting satellite imagery from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2, USGS/NASA Landsat 8, and commercial provider Maxar/DigitalGlobe imagery obtained through collaboration with the USGS Hazards Data Distribution System. Imagery were processed into true color and other formats for incorporation into the NWS Damage Assessment Toolkit, a project collaboration previously supported through NASA's Applied Sciences Program and highlighted in the March 2020 issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Virtual collaborations between NASA and NWS meteorologists led to discussions around the provided data, and use of the data revealed a portion of a tornado damage track that may have otherwise been missed due to limited road network availability during the in-person ground survey. As an ongoing research activity NASA explored the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from the ESA Sentinel platform and plan to continue research in collaboration with ongoing sponsored research. There are plans to explore how SAR can complement optical land surface remote sensing in observations of damage areas. Input will be based on contribution of information from the NASA Earth Science branch.
Contributed by William W. Vaughan, CCM
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June 17, 1:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
AMS Committee on Open Environmental Information Services (COEIS) is sponsoring a series of five Seminars in the next 6 months on enhancing Weather Applications through access and exploitation of Environmental Data offered through NOAA's Big Data Cloud Project and other weather industry sectors. This seminar will provide an overview of the seminar series including objectives and desired outcomes to drive accelerated development and implementation of advanced weather data products, analytics and artificial intelligence.
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Upcoming Meetings
See information regarding AMS meetings and COVID-19.
19th Conference on Mountain Meteorology
13–17 July 2020, Virtual Meeting
Cancelled: 2020 Summer Community Meeting
28–29 July 2020, Norman, OK
22nd Biennial Joint AMS/AGU Heads and Chairs Meeting
8–9 October 2020
2020 AMS Washington Forum
26–28 October 2020, Washington, DC
101st AMS Annual Meeting
10–14 January 2021, New Orleans, LA
34th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology
9–14 May 2021, New Orleans, LA
13th Fire and Forest Meteorology Symposium
11–13 May 2021, Palm Springs, CA
49th Conference on Broadcast Meteorology/Sixth Conference on Weather Warnings and Communication
15–18 June 2021, Milwaukee, WI
34th Conference on Agricultural and Forest Meteorology/Fifth Conference on Atmospheric Biogeosciences
21–23 June 2021, Minneapolis, MN
24th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence
12–16 July 2021, Šibenik, Croatia
40th Conference on Radar Meteorology
30 August–3 September 2021, Minneapolis, MN
30th Conference on Severe Local Storms
18–22 October 2021, Santa Fe, NM
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Journal Articles of Interest | |
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Below please find a select group of articles from upcoming AMS journals we thought would be of interest to you. To access these articles, follow the listed links to the abstracts. To access the full article, click on the PDF tab.
As part of AMS's response to COVID-19, all AMS journal articles are freely available, effective through 30 September 2020, so there is no password necessary.
Struggling to Personalize Threat, Tornado Victims Still Don’t Act
Weather, Climate, and Society
Researchers studying the violent Tuscaloosa, Alabama, tornado of April 2011 determined that “a significant chasm exists between the dissemination of warnings and the personalizing of risks” despite days of advance notice of imminent severe weather. They conclude from a survey conducted after the event that people still only seek limited protection when faced with the threat of severe weather because they don’t believe that they personally are actually at risk. This creates a conundrum in how to jolt those directly threatened by potentially deadly weather into life-saving action, even when the threat is clear and significant.
Discuss on Twitter: #WeaClimateSoc
It Doesn’t Mean in an Ice Storm Everyone Should Jump in Their Cars
Weather, Climate, and Society
Walking is not safer than driving during winter storms, a new study finds. Before you grab your keys, the takeaway from the research is that emphasizing extra caution in warnings and advisories should be placed on walking versus driving during such events as falls in snow and especially on ice increase and in fact double the number of winter hazard injuries, respectively, than after storms. Additionally, same-level falls in ice and snow account for 64 percent more of the injury burden than motor vehicle collisions.
Discuss on Twitter: #WeaClimateSoc
Perceptions, Clear Communication Take Backseat to Reasoning When Crossing Flooded Roads
Weather, Climate, and Society
When confronted with flooded roadways drivers demonstrate complex reasoning in deciding whether to avoid or drive into danger. Citing flooding conditions as not always clear, participants in a new survey said they decide on a “case-by-case basis,” gauging such factors as “the prior successful crossing of other vehicles, presence of signs and barricades, presence of passengers, risk of personal injury or damage to the vehicle, and the availability of flood-related information.” While they generally trust official warning messages, they still weigh the dangers and continue to enter flooded roadways, indicating education and communication alone are not enough for prevention.
Discuss on Twitter: #WeaClimateSoc
Spinning Our Way Toward Successfully Understanding Climate Attribution
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Using the concept of the boardgame and gameshow “spinner board”---think Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, and Wheel of Fortune---researchers have hit upon success explaining climate change attribution to the general public. Using a spinner board with a pie-shaped area, say for a Cat. 5 hurricane in a given season, as a possibility for what our weather might realize each year, and then widening that area to show how climate change is altering our weather by increasing the annual odds for Cat 5s, the study concludes that even people without an understanding of a difference between weather and climate “readily” understand this basic attribution and can explain it to others. It could prove a useful model for TV weather broadcasters and climate change reporters.
Discuss on Twitter: #BulletinAMS
Hurricane Forecasters May Have a New Way to Predict Rapid Intensification
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
The saltiness of the oceans ahead of hurricanes can lead them to rapidly intensify, new research concludes, with a less-salty sea surface having a greatly pronounced effect. The finding has been introduced into models to predict dangerous rapid intensification (RI) with significant results, offering salinity, which already is detected by satellites globally, as a predictor of RI that can be used in real-time operations at the National Hurricane Center.
Discuss on Twitter: #BulletinAMS
Website Tracks Public Understanding of Tornadoes
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
There’s a new website that tracks public understanding of tornadoes, and all of us can help update it. The new, openly available online tool combines societal databases with survey results about people’s understanding of weather information. But there are some surprising wrinkles in the data. For example, why do people in Norman, Oklahoma, think they know more about severe weather than those in Fort Worth, Texas? The Severe Weather and Society Dashboard (WxDash) was designed to provide the opportunity to learn why, its creators say.
Discuss on Twitter: #BulletinAMS
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 Kelly Savoie and Rex Horner. This newsletter as well as past issues are available online.
The Fall 2020 Newsletter submission deadline is 15 September 2020.
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