by AMS Staff Photo credit: Pok Rie, Pexels Climate change is an unseen force behind maritime piracy, with opposite impacts on two of the world’s major pirate hotspots, according to a paper just published in the American Meteorological Society journal Weather, Climate, and Society (WCAS). The study, by Bo Jiang, PhD (University of Macau), and Gary LaFree, PhD (University of Maryland, College Park), examines 20 years’ worth of data, demonstrating that years with warmer ocean temperatures see increased piracy off the coasts of East Africa, but decreased piracy in the South China Sea. The reason i ..read more

The Pacific Northwest still is one of the few shining spots on the snow map for this holiday, but if Seattle is waiting with bated breath (and outstretched tongue)  for a big, beautiful White Christmas, Cliff Mass throws a bucket of cold (flakes?) on hopes for deep cover. He explains how numerical prediction models can overstate snow possibilities in low elevations near mountains. But also: he explains the commonly misunderstood difference between accumulated snow (what fell from the sky) and snow depth (what remains to pile up). If you are one of the lucky few with snow on Christmas Day ..read more

Severe thunderstorms are expected to erupt late this afternoon in the upper Midwest and, according to the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), they could organize into a single, large bowing line capable of widespread damaging winds called a derecho tonight. Last summer a very destructive derecho blitzed Iowa with wind gusts over 100 mph. SPC Convective Outlook SPC’s Day 1 Convective Outlook has a large part of Wisconsin in a moderate risk of severe storms, with enhanced and slight risk areas surrounding it extending northwest into Minnesota and southeast into northwest Ohio. Supercell thunders ..read more

While a major winter storm last month was plastering the United States from Texas and New Mexico to New England with heavy snow and ice, volatile conditions in the Southeast (SE) spawned damaging and deadly tornadoes. One of these overnight Monday, February 16, tragically took the lives of 3 people and injured 10 in coastal North Carolina. Such nocturnal tornadoes are common in the Southeastern U.S.—a unique trait—and represent an extreme danger to sleeping residents. From the first in #flwx & #gawx to the #tornado preliminarily rated EF3 in #ncwx — radar imagery and CAPE pic.twitter.com ..read more

We’re on the verge of the first ever all-virtual AMS Annual Meeting—yet another milestone in a time of milestones, but nonetheless our 101st Annual Meeting. And like all of the mega-gatherings AMS has held for the weather, water, and climate community in the past, this coming week (starting Sunday, January 10th), promises many opportunities to catch up with what colleagues have been doing over the past year, what they’re thinking about now, and what they’re planning for coming years. Although we’ll miss the chance encounters, side conversations, and in-person meet-ups, this year’s virtual form ..read more

As we mentioned in the first post in this series of potential “Virtual” Pathways through the rich AMS Annual Meeting program of parallel conferences, this year’s overarching theme is especially powerful: “Strengthening engagement with communities through our science and services.”  This is a statement of needs, accomplishments, and future priorities all in one. After the recognitions so many people have had in 2020—a year of isolation and social distancing, of reliance on community, and of recognition that science is at the heart of cures and solutions for society, but also the recognitio ..read more

After a year of substantial social injustice-fueled upheavals, the 101st AMS Annual Meeting builds on social justice themes all week and you could make social justice the theme of you own virtual programming, picking and choosing your way through the sessions if you’re so inclined, right from the centerpiece Presidential Forum on Sunday, “Building a Culture of Anti-Racism in the Weather, Water and Climate Community.” The session promises to be a frank conversation on racism and its impacts on the weather, water, and climate community.  The panel will explore and discuss how racism against ..read more

Often our Annual Meeting week feels like a chance to get away from some of the day-to-day issues of work to focus on exchanging scientific ideas with colleagues. This year, the AMS Annual Meeting is a virtual gathering, however, so there’s little chance any of us will escape entirely the everyday concerns of COVID-19 this week, whether it was the subject of research, a challenge to providing services, performing community engagement, educating future scientists, or even if it meant impacts on the world that obscured research results in other topics. The meeting programming itself is an indicat ..read more

As we noted in the previous blog post, there are multiple ways to navigate an AMS Annual Meeting, even though we’re usually channeled into separate rooms devoted to parallel conferences, each focused on an area of specialization. But this year’s all-virtual conference, during the coming week, offers unusual prospects for hopping from conference to conference, with room to follow crosscutting themes. One of the most active such themes this year is the relationship of extreme weather to climate change. The Conference on Climate Variability and Change is a natural home for such presentations; for ..read more

We’re on the verge of the first ever all-virtual AMS Annual Meeting—yet another milestone in a time of milestones, but nonetheless our 101st Annual Meeting. And like all of the mega-gatherings AMS has held for the weather, water, and climate community in the past, this coming week (starting Sunday, January 10th), promises many opportunities to catch up with what colleagues have been doing over the past year, what they’re thinking about now, and what they’re planning for coming years. Although we’ll miss the chance encounters, side conversations, and in-person meet-ups, this year’s virtual form ..read more