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A series of webinars and panel discussions were conducted on the topic of the evolving role of humans in weather prediction and communication, in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the AMS. One main theme that arose was the inevitability that new tools using artificial intelligence will improve data analysis, forecasting, and communication. We discussed what tools are being created, how they are being created, and how the tools will potentially affect various duties for operational meteorologists in multiple sectors of the profession. Even as artificial intelligence increases automation, humans will remain a vital part of the forecast process as that process changes over time. Additionally, both university training and professional development must be revised to accommodate the evolving forecasting process, including addressing the need for computing and data skills (including artificial intelligence and visualization), probabilistic and ensemble forecasting, decision support, and communication skills. These changing skill sets necessitate that both the U.S. Government’s Meteorologist General Schedule 1340 requirements and the AMS standards for a bachelor’s degree need to be revised. Seven recommendations are presented for student and forecaster preparation and career planning, highlighting the need for students and operational meteorologists to be flexible lifelong learners, acquire new skills, and be engaged in the changes to forecast technology in order to best serve the user community throughout their careers. The article closes with our vision for the ways that humans can maintain an essential role in weather prediction and communication, highlighting the interdependent relationship between computers and humans.

Tor Bergeron was a key member of the Bergen School of Meteorology that developed some of the most influential contributions to synoptic analysis in the twentieth century: airmass analysis, polar-front theory, and the Norwegian cyclone model. However, the eventual success of these so-called Bergen methods of synoptic analysis was not guaranteed. Concerns and criticisms of the methods—in part from the lack of referencing to prior studies, overly simplified conceptual models, and lack of real data in papers by J. Bjerknes and Solberg—were inhibiting worldwide adoption. Bergeron’s research output in the 1920s was aimed at addressing these concerns. His doctoral thesis, written in German, was published as a journal article in Geofysiske Publikasjoner in 1928. Here, an accessible and annotated English translation is provided along with a succinct overview of this seminal study. Major interlaced themes of Bergeron’s study were the first comprehensive description of the Bergen methods: a vigorous defense of cyclogenesis as primarily a lower-tropospheric process as opposed to an upper-tropospheric–lower-stratospheric one; a nuanced explanation of the assertion that meteorology constituted a distinct and special scientific discipline; and, very understandably, a thorough account of Bergeron’s own contributions to the Bergen School. His contributions included identifying how deformation results in frontogenesis and frontolysis, classifying the influence of aerosols on visibility, and explaining the role of the ambient conditions in the onset of drizzle as opposed to rain showers—a distinction that led the formulation of the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process.

The belief that weather influences people’s health has been prevalent for millennia. Recent studies on the relationship between weather and pain for those who suffer from chronic pain remain indeterminate, with some studies finding strong effects and others finding no effects; most studies face limitations to their study design or dataset size. To address these limitations, a U.K.-wide smartphone study Cloudy with a Chance of Pain was conducted over 15 months with 10,584 citizen scientists who suffer from chronic pain, producing the largest dataset both in duration and number of participants. Compared to other similar citizen-science studies, our retention of participants was substantially better, with 15% still entering data nearly every day after 200 days. Analysis of the dataset using synoptic climatology and compositing revealed the daily weather associated with a prevalence of high pain and low pain across the population. Specifically, our results indicate that the top 10% of days with a high percentage of participants (about 20%) experiencing a pain event (represented here by a +1 change or greater in their pain level on a 5-point scale; referred to as a high-pain day) were associated with below-normal pressure, above-normal humidity, higher precipitation rate, and stronger wind. In contrast, the bottom 10% of days with a small percentage of participants (about 10%) experiencing a pain event (a low-pain day) were associated with above-normal pressure, below-normal humidity, lower precipitation rate, and weaker wind. Thus, these synoptic weather patterns support the beliefs of many participants who said that low pressure—and its accompanying weather—was associated with a pain event.

Alfred Wegener not only proposed the theory of continental drift, but was also the founder of modern tornado research in Europe.Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) was a leading geophysicist, atmospheric scientist, and an Arctic explorer who is mainly remembered today for his contributions to the theory of continental drift. Less well known are his contributions to research on tornadoes in Europe. Published 100 years ago, Wegener’s 1917 book Wind- und Wasserhosen in Europa (Tornadoes and Waterspouts in Europe) is an impressive synthesis of knowledge on tornadoes and is considered the first modern pan-European tornado climatology with 258 reports from 1456–1913. Unfortunately, Wegener’s book was overlooked after the 1950s amid declining interest in tornadoes by European researchers and meteorologists. The recent revival of tornado studies in Europe invites a reflection on Wegener’s book. Using a relatively small dataset, Wegener was able to describe characteristics of tornadoes (e.g., direction of movement, speed, rotation, formation mechanism), as well as their frequency of occurrence and climatology, comparable with the results from modern tornado climatologies. Wegener’s lasting scientific contributions to tornado research are presented in the context of European research on this topic. Specifically, his book showed the utility of reports from citizen scientists and inspired other researchers, namely Johannes Letzmann who continued to study European tornadoes after Wegener’s death.

Although rain shadows (i.e., leeside reductions of precipitation downwind of orography) are commonly described in textbooks, quantitative climatologies of the rain-shadow effect are rare. To test quantitatively a classic rain-shadow locality of the Peak District, United Kingdom, precipitation from 54 observing stations over 30 years (1981–2010) are examined. Under 850-hPa westerlies, annual and daily precipitation amounts are on average higher in Manchester in the west and the Peak District than in Sheffield in the east. More precipitation falls—and falls more frequently—frequently in Manchester than Sheffield on 197 westerly flow days annually. In contrast, more precipitation falls—and falls more frequently—in Sheffield than Manchester on 28 easterly flow days annually. These bulk precipitation statistics support a climatological rain shadow. However, when individual days are investigated, only 17% of westerly flow days occur where daily rainfall data might exhibit the rain-shadow effect (defined here as Manchester with precipitation and Sheffield with no precipitation). In contrast, only 10% of easterly flow days occur where daily rainfall data might exhibit the rain-shadow effect (Sheffield with precipitation and Manchester with no precipitation). Thus, westerly winds are more likely to exhibit a rain-shadow effect than easterly winds. Although the distribution of precipitation observed across the Peak District can sometimes be explained by the rain-shadow effect, the occurrence of the rain-shadow effect by our admittedly strict definition is not as frequent as one might expect to explain the local precipitation climate for which it has sometimes been previously credited. Thus, an attempt to understand the climatological relevance of the rain-shadow effect from one location reveals ambiguity in the definition of a rain shadow and in its interpretation from real rainfall data.

The European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL) was founded in 2006 to advance the science and forecasting of severe convective storms in Europe. ESSL was a grassroots effort of individual scientists from various European countries. The purpose of this article is to describe the 10-yr history of ESSL and present a sampling of its successful activities. Specifically, ESSL developed and manages the only multinational database of severe weather reports in Europe: the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD). Despite efforts to eliminate biases, the ESWD still suffers from spatial inhomogeneities in data collection, which motivates ESSL’s research into modeling climatologies by combining ESWD data with reanalysis data. ESSL also established its ESSL Testbed to evaluate developmental forecast products and to provide training to forecasters. The testbed is organized in close collaboration with several of Europe’s national weather services. In addition, ESSL serves a central role among the European scientific and forecast communities for convective storms, specifically through its training activities and the series of European Conferences on Severe Storms. Finally, ESSL conducts wind and tornado damage assessments, highlighted by its recent survey of a violent tornado in northern Italy.

David M. Schultz shares his experience of adapting the lessons from his book 'Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better Writer, Speaker, and Atmospheric Scientist' to a laboratory course 'Communication Skills for Scientists' at the University of Helsinki during the winter of 2008/09. David recommended that the students buy two books: The Elements of Style (Strunk and White 2000) and Presentation Zen (Reynolds 2008). Having read more than 30 books on communication skills while researching the content for Eloquent Science, David felt these books were the two most essential purchases. The lectures would be supplemented with Gopen and Swan's (1990) 'The Science of Scientific Writing' and draft excerpts from Eloquent Science. In the first homework assignment, each student rated the quality of 20 titles of published journal articles. During the next class period, David asked the students to bring their lists to class, and, within a group of three students, select the absolute worst title among them all and propose a new title.

Characteristics of 63 journals publishing peer-reviewed articles on atmospheric science were collected from online information and through a survey e-mailed to the journals. The rate that submitted manuscripts were rejected for publication (hereafter, the rejection rate) was available for 47 (75%) of the journals. Although the range in rejection rates is quite large (2%–91%), most journals reject between 25% and 60% of submitted manuscripts, with a mean of 38.7%, a result of more than 6,000 manuscripts a year rejected for publication. Some journals have a policy of the editor vigorously rejecting manuscripts without peer review, whereas others send either all or nearly all of the manuscripts out for peer review. Measures of journal volume and quality (i.e., number of submissions, number of published articles, number of citations, impact factor, immediacy index, article half-life) show little, if any, relationship to rejection rates, indicating that rejection rates are not higher for journals of higher per...

The Second Forum on the Future Role of the Human in the Forecast Process occurred on 2-3 August 2005 at the American Meteorological Society's Weather Analysis and Forecasting Conference in Washington, D.C. The forum consisted of three sessions. This paper discusses the second session, featuring three presentations on the cognitive and psychological aspects of expert weather forecasters. The first presentation discussed the learning gap between students (goal seekers) and teachers (knowledge seekers)-a similar gap exists between forecasters and researchers. In order to most effectively train students or forecasters, teachers must be able to teach across this gap using some methods described within. The second presentation discussed the heuristics involved in weather forecasting and decision making under time constraints and uncertainty. The final presentation classified the spectrum of forecasters from intuitive scientists to the disengaged. How information technology can best be adapted so as not to inhibit intuitive scientists from their mental modeling of weather scenarios is described. Forecasters must continuously refine their skills through education and training, and be aware of the heuristic contributions to the forecast process, to maintain expertise and have the best chance of ensuring a dynamic role in the future forecast process. © 2008 American Meteorological Society Privacy Policy and Disclaimer.

he transport and transformations of water sub-stance in the global water cycle are of fundamental and primary importance for understanding the ecosystems, the land surface hydrology that supports them, and the management of water resources for humans. Th e water cycle is also critical for predicting weather, and the long-term climate balance of the planet. Despite the importance of water and a tremendous body of work researching its processes, critical questions re-garding the global water cycle remain. Th ese questions range from fundamental details of the spectroscopy of water, to the forecasting of precipitation, to closing the budget of the hydrological cycle on many scales.Discussion of these and other topics relevant to contemporary water-cycle research led us to outline some themes, questions, and proposed opportunities. Many of these, and broader, issues have been brought to the forefront of scientific discourse through a number of strategic documents that have recently been published (see “For Further Reading” below). To minimize duplication with earlier eff orts, we focus on integrating themes and strategic opportunities identifi ed at the workshop.

Based on a talk given at the sixth annual meeting of the Atmospheric Science Librarians International, this paper explores the author;s experiences performing reviews of the scientific literature as a tool to advancing meteorology and studying the history of science. Three phases of performing literature searches with varying degrees of interaction with a research librarian are considered: do it yourself, librarian assisted, and librarian as collaborator. Examples are given for each phase: occluded fronts, conditional symmetric instability, and static instability terminology, respectively. Electronic availability of information is changing the relationship between scientists and librarians. Yet, despite these changes, books on library shelves and knowledgeable human librarians remain essential to the scientific enterprise.

Winter storms and their prediction are of increasing importance throughout the region of the United States with the fastest growing population, the Intermountain West. Such storms can produce heavy orographic snowfall, lake-effect snowbands, and even lightning. Unfortunately, precipitation forecast skill is lower over the Intermountain West thanother regions of the country because of the complex topography, the lack or limited utility of upstream and in situ data, and insufficient understanding of storm and precipitation processes. The Intermountain Precipitation Experiment (IPEX) is a research program designed to improve the understanding, analysis, and prediction of precipitation over the complex topography of the Intermountain West. The field phase of this research program was held in northern Utah in February 2000. During this time, seven storms were observed, including the heaviest snowfall to strike the Wasatch Mountains in two years, a tornadic bow echo associated with a strong cold front,...

The existence of the January thaw, a purported systematic anomalous warming in daily mean temperatures at northeastern U.S. stations during late January, is investigated quantitatively. A key idea in the analysis is that winter temperatures are intrinsically more variable, and this property must be accounted for when judging the unusualness of excursions of daily mean temperatures from a smooth climatic mean function. Accordingly the daily mean temperature departures are expressed nondimensionally by dividing by appropriate standard deviations that vary through the year. The warm excursion in observed records for late January is not always the most extreme such excursion in the nondimensionalized data, even when the definition of “excursion” is optimized to emphasize the late January event. Hypothesis tests based on time series models with smoothly varying climatologies (i.e., with no anomalous features such as the January thaw, by construction) are used to evaluate the statistical significance of the obs...

The Eighth Cyclone Workshop was held at the Far Hills Inn and Conference Center in Val Morin, Quebec, Canada, 12–16 October 1992. The workshop was arranged around several scientific themes of current research interest. The most widely debated theme was the applicability of “potential vorticity thinking” to theoretical, observational, and numerical studies of the life cycle of cyclones and the interaction of these cyclones with their environment on all spatial and temporal scales. A combination of invited and contributed talks, with preference given to younger scientists, made up the workshop.