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In an average year, high temperatures kill more people in the United States than all other weather-related phenomena combined (NOAA 2016), and in New York City two-thirds of heat-related deaths occur at home. Those most at risk are the ill and elderly, who tend to be home throughout the day. Yet few studies capture indoor residential temperatures in non-air-conditioned homes. 

Douglas Dockery from the Harvard Chan School of Medicine covers 50 years of air pollution history and research in this fascinating talk. This includes a look at how energy production and the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s impacted human health and pollution research, and why the focus on PM2.5 particulates came to be. 

Hippocrates (circa 400 BCE) wrote in On Airs, Waters, and Places that diseases had seasonal cycles and the health of city dwellers was affected by prevailing wind directions. Such ideas persisted until the eighteenth century. Today, a common belief among three-quarters of patients who suffer from chronic pain is that their daily pain levels fluctuate with the weather.

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.

Here are a few of the news stories from the weather and atmospheric sciences world that we've been following this week. Do you have a story we missed? Share it in the community!

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.

Any beachgoer could find themselves in trouble or see someone else in danger. For our own safety, we can learn how to think like a lifeguard. 

The Northeastern Storm Conference is the largest and longest running student led conference in the nation. What once was a small meeting of students on the Lyndon State College campus has grown into a three-day conference with hundreds of attendees from across the country.

While the scientific methods have varied a great deal, weather forecasting has been a subject of human endeavor for as long as we have written records! Ancient forecasters used everything from cloud observations to jellyfish sightings to predict the weather and help them make their most important decisions on topics from going to war to sowing crops. 

There have been many changes in the role of humans in the forecast process in recent years and many new roles that have been created in this era of social media, smart technology, and artificial intelligence. This webinar series details how humans will use machine learning and other techniques to develop tools that will assist forecasters, not replace them.

AMS 2018 Keynote Speaker Richard Alley joins us to share his enthusiasm for science and science communication.

The Weather Band is for all of us who are fascinated with the wide range of phenomena we see in the atmosphere, from the power of hurricanes to the delicacy of a dendritic snowflake.

Watch TODAY anchor Dave Garroway deliver the national weather forecast via telephone and by hand.

We sat down with artist and science communicator Jill Pelto to learn more about her background and fieldwork, her artistic process, and why she sees art as the key to connecting more audiences to science. 

Watch the original film on relief efforts by the Workers Progress Administration to help communities along the East Coast of the United States recover from the "whirling, shrieking vortex of high wind and heavy rain" caused by the massive hurricane of 1938. 

In his book, Cloud Dynamics, Robert Houze quotes Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn:

“The fifth night below St. Louis, we had a big storm after midnight, with the power of thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in a solid sheet.”  (Houze, Cloud Dynamics, Academic Press, 1993). The likelihood is that Twain's story was recounting a common occurrence in the Midwest summer: what we know today as the mesoscale convective system or MCS, a conglomeration of thunderstorms that often reach a peak in the middle of the night.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The National Weather Service in Miami has issued an unofficial warning for falling iguanas the week of Christmas. 

If you know me, it’s no secret that my love of tornadoes runs deep. Ever since I saw my first funnel cloud at two years old, I’ve wanted to be a meteorologist. I knew I didn’t want to be a broadcaster, I wanted to do “behind-the-scenes” research on tornadoes.

What is a secret though is that I’m deathly afraid of tornadoes.

On January 14th-15th, 1972, a National Weather Service (NWS) cooperative observer (COOP) site located in Loma, Montana recorded a 103F degree temperature change (-54F to 49F) within twenty-four hours, thereby breaking the previous record of 100F recorded on January 23rd-24th, 1916 in Browning, Montana. 

What if weather observations were made differently in each country, or even by State or region? 

We compare observations to understand weather phenomenon in order to predict future conditions and document historical ones. If each location took their observations differently, we would never be able to understand what we are looking at.