Articles

We are thrilled to have an amazing line up of speakers for the upcoming Weather Band Citizen and Community Science Symposium. To give you a small sneak preview of what's to come, here are short biographies for some of our speakers. They are arranged alphabetically, with more to come in the weeks ahead. A huge thank you to all of our speakers, and don't forget to register for the event! 

In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Michael Ray describes how the Nurse Tree Design citizen science project seeks to mimic biological strategies for mitigating and adapting to temperature extremes in order to protect a raised garden through four seasons in the desert southwest. Extreme weather conditions at the garden site in Tucson Arizona can fluctuate 100 degrees (17 F to 117 F).

Interested in becoming a CoCoRaHS volunteer or just want to know more about what it's like to be a volunteer? Watch this fun video from James Kendall, who shared his experiences as part of the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium.

Using soil moisture and rain/snowfall data, Peter Callen has come up with a system of rating each month's overall relative wetness/dryness on a scale from -2 to +2. In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Peter details how the months are added up for each year, and how he creates charts shows the monthly and yearly changes for the past 10 years.

What does climate change mean in one's own backyard? By monitoring earlier ripening apples and creating an Excel analysis of KSEA temperature data Gerald Myers manages to catch a glimpse of the future for himself and his garden in this presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium. 

In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Ted Best illustrates through case examples how the use of citizen weather observations can elucidate mesoscale convective events. A convective wind event, a long-lived thunderstorm with hail, and a mesoscale convective system with heavy rain show how individual observations can be collected to form a more detailed picture of an event for study. A combination of storm spotting, storm reports, CoCoRaHS observations, and radar images is presented for each case. These observations can call attention to events that might otherwise be missed in a busy and complex environment and can be helpful for improving future forecasts.

In a partnership now entering its second year, the American Philosophical Society and two Philadelphia area schools are continuing the weather data collection and observations that were started by some of our country's great 18th century thinkers. During this presentation from Dave Curry and Alexandra Rospond, you'll find out how students are connecting past with present as they learn to collect accurate local synoptic weather data.

In this interactive talk presented at the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Jessica Taylor and Dr. Jay Welsh from NASA walk the audience through the ins and outs of the award winning GLOBE and CLOUD GAZE programs, including how to use the app, what happens to your data, and how you can see what's being tracked around the world.

In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Craig Lowe shows how Bahamian Storm and Hurricane Interceptors came to be and what they do to assist The Bahamas Department of Meteorology and The National Emergency Management Agency with valuable information on active Weather Threats.

I was listening to the WeatherBrains podcast (Episode 806) and there was a discussing what constitutes a tornado outbreak and the fact that there is not a rigorous definition for the term outbreak. And I am not sure there is a need to define the term for meteorological purposes. But I wondered if I could come up with my own Outbreak Index to allow comparison and ranking of events that might be termed a tornado outbreak.

In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Candice Erdmann describes how, during a severe windstorm on Labor Day 2020, several wildfires began to tear through parts of the Oregon Cascades Range. This includes a discussion of the topography, air quality monitors used, and data verification processes.

This presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium offers a brief presentation of original quantitative data gathered from personal equipment in a residence to explore the relevance of dynamic atmospheric barometer readings with respect to the slightly different indoor oxygen levels. The audience may make their own  implications or interpretations of the data as it relates to the maintenance, prevention, and treatment of common respiratory health issues.

Did you know that snow can fall at temperatures above freezing? In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Jeff Uhlik describes the impact of community engagement through the Tahoe Rain or Snow project. The group is working to reduce inaccuracies in determining precipitation type by estimating the temperature of the rain-snow boundary, which is used in weather forecasts and hydrologic models. With help from Tahoe Rain or Snow weather spotters, they have been able to record evidence of snow consistently falling at above-freezing temperatures in the Sierra Nevada. This project is now expanding in 21/22 to include many parts of the Western US.

The 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium was a huge success thanks to its amazing speakers and enthusiastic attendees. Over 350 people registered for the event, which showcased nearly 30 speakers over two days of presentations. This was the first time that the AMS Weather Band has held this event, and it was a true testament to the high quality of citizen and community scientists, as well as to the programs that train and support these weather enthusiasts.

In this presentation from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Davyon Hill of the National Weather Service discusses how he has built and sustained a successful SKYWARN program even while transitioning to a virtual environment because of the pandemic. He also presents on spearheading his office's Belonging Inclusion Diversity and Equity team; and the impact that spotters have for their local communities both for public safety, and as mentors for youth from underserved and under represented communities. 

Learn all about the history of CoCoRaHS, how it grew to be the dominant network of weather observers, the impact of all this data collection, and how you can get involved yourself! Noah Newman takes the audience through this important citizen science initiative in this presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium.

Tanja Fransen's presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium covers the increasing issues with wildfire smoke intrusions and public health and how a Weather Ready Nation needs to include partners in the public health arenas.  

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.

These two presentations from the 2022 AMS Weather Band Community and Citizen Science Symposium showcase the importance of community led science to make change. In the first one, Melissa Goodwin from AGU details the philosophy and case studies from the work of the Thriving Earth Exchange; a transformative program that puts community leaders at the heart of scientific projects.

Weather service providers around the world offer the public forecasts and warnings to improve decision making and protect life and property. Recent surveys have found that, in the United States, weather news is one of the most popular items in the media (Pew Research Center 2008; Wilson 2008). In fact, it has been estimated that 300 billion forecasts are obtained by U.S. adults on an annual basis (Lazo et al. 2009). But there are very few studies that look at how and why the public gets, reads, and responds to weather information, even though this research is fundamental to the design of weather products and communication strategies.