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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.

In 1963, Fred Sanders wrote “it is urged the probability be acknowledged as the proper internal language of forecasters.” As such, we can consider all forecasts to be based on probabilities. Nevertheless, as Sanders discussed, issuance of probabilistic forecasts to users is not completely clear. In many cases, users may prefer a categorical forecast and, as such, the internal language of probabilities must be translated into an external language of categorical forecasts. Although there are simple ways to threshold probabilities of a dichotomous (yes/no) event into a yes/no forecast, doing so in a way that is consistent between the two expressions is not always easy. This becomes even more complex when not all users have the same decision threshold and, as a result, may have different preferences for where the optimal threshold is set. A typical example of this problem is the area of tornado forecasting, especially for short range ( Although this methodology could not directly produce tornado warnings in an operational setting, it provides some limits on how a future system based on probabilities could be constrained. The process allows for the development of thresholded forecasts that are consistent with the underlying probabilistic information.

Psychiatric illness and cardiovascular disease occur together more frequently than expected then by chance alone. Several of the established risk factors for coronary artery disease account for this increased risk of comorbidity. Psychiatric illness appears to increase the risk for hypertension. Smoking rates are higher in patients with psychiatric illness than for populations without psychiatric illness. Elevated serum cholesterol levels often occur in panic and other anxiety disorders. In contrast, there is accumulating evidence that low cholesterol levels are linked to violent death, including suicide. Myocardial infarction represents a major life stressor that can precipitate an episode of major depression. Prolonged depression following myocardial infarction can become an independent risk factor for cardiac mortality. These associations increase the need for psychiatrists to be aware of the risk factors for coronary heart disease and to assist with the assessment and management of these risk factors in patients with mental illness.

In the past century, lightning killed more people in the United States on average annually than any other storm situation except floods. However, due to persistent lightning safety efforts by a multidisciplinary team, the annual National Lightning Safety Awareness Week campaign, shifts in population from rural to urban areas, and improved grounding of buildings, US lightning deaths have decreased to an average of less than 50 per year over the past decade. This demonstrates that aggressive public education can have a significant role in reducing lightning deaths and injuries.

A preliminary report is presented of a prospective randomized trial conducted by eight cooperative institutions under the auspices of the National Heart and Lung Institute to compare the effectiveness of medical and surgical therapy in the management of the acute stages of unstable angina pectoris. To date 150 patients have been included in the randomized trial, 80 assigned to medical and 70 to surgical therapy; the clinical presentation, coronary arterial anatomy and left ventricular function in the two groups are similar. Some physicians have been reluctant to prescribe medical or surgical therapy by a random process, and the ethical basis of the trial has been questioned. Since there are no hard data regarding the natural history and outcome of therapy for unstable angina pectoris, randomization appears to provide a rational way of selecting therapy. Furthermore, subsets of patients at high risk may emerge during the process of randomization. The design of this randomized trial is compared with that of another reported trial. Thus far, the study has shown that it is possible to conduct a randomized trial in patients with unstable angina pectoris, and that the medical and surgical groups have been similar in relation to the variables examined. The group as a whole presented with severe angina pectoris, either as a crescendo pattern or as new onset of angina at rest, and 84 percent had recurrence of pain while in the coronary care unit and receiving vigorous medical therapy. It is anticipated that sufficient patients will have been entered into the trial within the next 12 months to determine whether medical or surgical therapy is superior in the acute stages of unstable angina pectoris.

Right ventricular performance was studied relative to right coronary artery flow in the chloralose-anesthetized, open chest dog. The right coronary artery was cannulated for measurement and control of flow and pressure. Under control conditions, right coronary artery occlusion caused no change in cardiac output, or right and left ventricular pressures, although right ventricular contractile force fell markedly. With right coronary artery flow intact, incremental pulmonary artery obstruction caused a corresponding decline in cardiac output and elevation of right ventricular end-diastolic pressure with eventual total right ventricular failure and systemic shock. With right coronary artery occlusion, identical degrees of pulmonary artery obstruction resulted in more pronounced changes in cardiac output and right ventricular end-diastolic pressure with right ventricular failure occurring at a much lower level of right ventricular stress.However, with right coronary artery flow intact, the right ventricular decompensation induced by pulmonary artery obstruction, could be reversed by raising right coronary artery perfusion to levels above normal, thus increasing right ventricular performance and restoring cardiac output. We conclude that right ventricular failure and resultant systemic hypotension due to severe pulmonary artery obstruction can be reversed simply by right coronary artery hyperperfusion, and that, although a normally contractile right ventricular free wall is not essential to maintain cardiac performance at rest, during right ventricular systolic stress, over-all cardiac performance becomes increasingly dependent on the right ventricle. The data further imply that increased myocardial impingement on right coronary artery flow during systole in right ventricular hypertension may be an important factor leading to right ventricular failure.

The regional responses of normal myocardium distant from an ischemic area were studied during acute anterior descending occlusion in the open-chest chloralose-anesthetized pig. Three markers of regional response in both normal and ischemic areas were used: surface ECG electrode, a force gauge in series with left ventricular outer wall fibers, and coronary blood inflow to each region as determined by electromagnetic cuff-probes. Following brief anterior descending artery occlusion (120 sec)., a characteristic rapid decline in contractile force and evolution of TQ-ST segment changes was observed in the ischemic area. In contrast, in the distant area increases in contractil force (p less than 0.001) and coronary blood flow (p less than 0.002) occurred. These distant responses were essentially obliterated following transection and cannulation of the artery supplying this region (p less than 0.05). The findings are consistent with a reflex neurovascular mechanism operating within the intact heart. This reflex is rapidly activated in order to maintain adequate levels of cardiac performance despite sudden loss of functional myocardial mass.

Around 2–3 violent tornadoes hit Europe per decade. Although they are less frequent compared to the Great Plains of the United States, Europe has a population density higher by the order of the magnitude, thus extreme convective events typically produce large societal impacts and considerable damage to infrastructure. As operational prediction of such events is of high priority to emergency managers and forecasters, in this study we reconstruct environmental conditions for selected 12 violent tornadoes from the period between 1950 and 2021. Because numerical modeling of severe weather events requires convection-permitting resolutions, we used the Weather Research and Forecasting model for dynamical downscaling of ERA5 reanalysis. Results show that out of 12 high-resolution simulations (3 km), in 10 cases the modelled updraft helicity (UH) tracks cross the neighborhood of tornado reports, however, in 2 cases the timing of convection was more than 3 hours away from the time of the reports. Analysis of vertical profiles show that all simulations represented favorable tornado environments with cyclonically curved hodographs, comparable to significant tornadoes on the Great Plains of the United States. The combination of UH tracks with convective environments offers promising results for operational forecasting in Europe, and should be explored in future studies.