Is storm chasing inherently an immoral behavior?

Since the deaths of storm chasers during the El Reno tornado of 31 May 2013, there's been a growing concern expressed on social media about the ethical basis for storm chasing.  I can understand those concerns and have expressed my own concerns on this blog several times, and in my web essays.

The question is, then, is chasing inherently immoral?  I wrote a lengthy essay a while back on chasing safety (see the "web essays" link above).  It's been updated several times as new issues have come to light.  There's another excellent blog by Barb Mayes Boustead on the post-El Reno tragedy that reflects what I think responsible chasers feel about this topic.  But some have the belief that even the concept of chaser responsibility is meaningless, because it's chasers who decide for themselves what responsibility means to them!  Thus, in this view, chaser responsibility has no meaning because it's a relative morality.  This has some similarity to the religious arguments about relative versus absolute morality.

Who besides chasers should decide what chase behavior is responsible?  There are no wholly objective chaser morality boards, and even if such did exist, any regulations they might impose are essentially unenforceable.  In the absence of a set of god-given chasing responsibility commands, I think most chasers have a pretty clear idea of what is responsible and what isn't - I tried to articulate this in my essay on the topic.  Part of the problem is that some chasers choose to flaunt their irresponsibility for all to see - a red badge of testimony to their extreme disdain for responsibility. They think of me (and other critics) as a self-righteous prude and thumb their noses at my concerns - these are storm chasing's "yahoos".  And of course some chasers have different opinions about this or that component of my safety essay.  The fact that such disagreement exists doesn't mean that it's not possible to define chaser responsibility in a meaningful way.  I suspect if a survey of chasers were to be done, the resulting consensus wouldn't be too different from what I've listed in my essay.   There might be circumstances where something mitigates the apparent irresponsibility of some act I've deemed to be of concern in that essay.  Not all nighttime chasing is irresponsible, for instance.

Some believe that by being on the roads, chasers are threatening the safety and efficacy of first responders and ordinary citizens - blocking the roads at a time when those roads are needed the most.  This is most serious whenever major chaser convergences arise, of course.  It's not so relevant for solo chasers.  Often, of late, locals on "joyride" chases in their vicinity or fleeing their homes can combine with numerous chasers to create long lines of vehicles, effectively blocking the roads, so this is not an unfounded concern.  I readily admit that massive chaser convergences can be a big problem, and I avoid them whenever possible.

I also believe that when chasers become casualties, they're adding to the burden imposed on first responders.  Resources needed to rescue an irresponsible chaser who got in close and paid the price are not available to the real victims of a devastating storm.  Responsible chasers avoid such situations. 

Another thing that I believe concerns critics of chasing in the post-El Reno era is the sensationalization of chasing and the celebrations of chasers over their successes, even as people's lives are devastated.  In fact, I've written about that here.  I share the concerns of critics about chasers showing their joy in videos.  At the very least, I recommend the audio portion of their glee be suppressed when their videos become public.  I understand the excitement of a successful chase, but chasers should be mindful that tornadoes can result in tragedy, and be respectful of those who have been unfortunate in having their lives destroyed by tornadoes.  Showing your excitement on videos shared in public media is simply not being responsible!

In the same way that the atmosphere doesn't obey my wishes, so that I bear no real responsibility for what tornadoes do, it seems that chasers are under no obligation to obey my "rules" about being responsible.  Widespread glamorization of chasers via the media has produced massive chaser convergences and brought in many new irresponsible chasers over the years.  I know of no way to stop the process and I have no authority to do so.

But is chasing inherently hostile/immoral?  Not when done by responsible chasers, some of whom have made contributions to the science of storms that have led to important new understanding that can be applied to the warning and forecasting of tornadoes.  Some have played roles in storm spotter training that undoubtedly have saved lives.  Chasing cannot inherently be hostile.  It becomes immoral only when the actions of irresponsible chasers lead, directly or indirectly, to harm to our society.

Let me illustrate this with an example:  many have seen the infamous "Turnpike" video from the 26 April 1991 event in Kansas.  That video showed people sheltering under an overpass as a tornado supposedly went right over them - their survival was implicitly advocating the use of overpasses as shelters.  The TV news team members were storm chasing, not accidentally caught and seeking to escape the danger, and their award-winning (!) video led to 3 fatalities under overpasses in the 03 May 1999 event in Oklahoma, as some of us had predicted eventually would happen.  No doubt the news team was unaware of the consequences of their video.  But it had unfortunate consequences, nonetheless, that were predictable.

How many people already have died in tornadoes with video cameras or cell phone cameras in their hands?  No one knows.  There may be many more of these about which we have little or no information - it may have happened in Tuscaloosa on 27 April 2011, two years before the El Reno chaser deaths.  Is this another unintended consequence of chasing?  Probably so - especially the sensationalization of tornado chasing that has become so pervasive in the media.   The competition to get the wildest, near-death experience recorded and broadcast has begun and clearly will result in more chaser fatalities.  And, likely, more irresponsible chasers.

I agree with the storm chasing's critics about how chasing is getting out of hand.  And there are aspects of chasing that I disavow.  But in the end, I chase storms because I'm fascinated by them.  I never did so to gain fame or fortune, but rather for the love of the natural world in all its awesome power and majesty.  I've tried to use my chasing experience to give something back to society in exchange for the opportunities I've been given to pursue a lifelong fascination.  I don't think that's being irresponsible or immoral.  I can't speak for others ...

Thoughts on Easter

Today, Easter Sunday, the social media are full of posts proclaiming the resurrection of christ jesus.  This outpouring of rapturous excitement over a mythical event nearly 2000 years ago provides justification for this blog post of mine.  They're entitled to believe whatever they wish, and are free to proclaim those beliefs however they choose, at least here in the USA.  So am I.  Hence, this is an occasion for me to discuss a particular aspect of this belief system.

I've already posted a web essay that provides an extended position statement, so I won't repeat all that here.  Keep in mind, the goal of my essays and blogs isn't to "de-convert" anyone from their beliefs (everyone has been "converted" to their religion - most often by their parents - no one ever was born with a particular religious belief), but rather to suggest that faith-based religions are irrational.  Every rational person knows there's no way to provide absolute proof of the existence of the abrahamic deity often referred to as "god".  Why is that?  If the putative deity exists, I'm told by believers, it chooses to avoid giving any tangible evidence of its existence (although it was quite willing to do so 2000 years ago, for some reason!), so that nowadays believers must accept it purely on faith (i.e., belief without evidence).  Evidence would apparently make it too easy!  Why is that?  Why should this deity work so hard to make it difficult to believe in it?

Every rational person also knows there's no way to provide absolute proof of the non-existence of said deity.  This is often a response from believers when their belief in a deity is challenged, who usually go on to commit the logical fallacy of claiming that the inability to disprove something constitutes proof of that something.  What we're really talking about is evidence, or more properly, its non-existence.  The evidence I see is basically consistent with the non-existence of a deity.  The burden of proof falls on the person making the claim, not someone who disbelieves the claim, especially in the absence of compelling evidence for the claim.  If someone were to provide convincing evidence, I'd be willing to change my mind.  Would believers do the same?  In many cases, it seems, they assert vigorously they would not!  I have another web essay on this topic, so I'm going to leave it at that, here.

What I really want to comment on this Easter Sunday is my continuing struggle with how otherwise intelligent and rational people are willing to embrace irrationality.  I'm not talking about fundamentalists who interpret scriptures literally and accept those scriptures as literal truth.  Fundamentalists must somehow rationalize that the literal words of scripture are contradictory, full of logical and historical errors, and sanction all sorts of behavior we would consider immoral.  I'm not going to dwell on this here.

Most christians in the US have interpreted many parts of the bible as metaphor, parables, songs, etc., and rationalized biblical words in various ways (e.g, 'Just how long was a "day" in the Genesis story of creation?'), no doubt at least in part because it's pretty clear that science contradicts those literal words, with a lot of evidence to back up the scientific understanding.  Believers have labored hard to find a way to accept 'magical thinking' even though they know magic is not real.  Unlike religion, science makes no claims to complete understanding, but what understanding it has developed since the Renaissance is solidly rooted in evidence - evidence that scientific understanding works in the real world, not just within the confines of a collection of writings from barely-civilized late Bronze Age tribal members of 2000+ years ago.  Is there a conflict between science and religion?  You bet there is!

The challenge that a rational believer must resolve is that clash between rational and irrational - you either develop your opinions and beliefs based on logic and evidence to the maximum extent possible, or you accept belief in the absence of evidence (faith).  Religious belief creates a cognitive dissonance with reason and evidence - a clash that must be resolved.  Many rational christian believers apparently solve this challenge by compartmentalization:  science and rationality hold sway in many (if not most) elements of their life, whereas in the religious compartment, faith and irrationality dominate.

Why would people do this?  I'm not qualified to provide an evidence-based answer, but I can at least speculate, so long as I admit I have no evidence.  Thus, I suspect otherwise rational people cling to their religious beliefs so desperately for many reasons:

• Fear of death and the promise of eternal life.  
• Threat of eternal punishment for unbelievers.  
• Hope for a reunion with those who have died before them.  
• Solace and comfort provided by a myth being used to control them.  
• Social support from their religious 'tribe'.
• Inertia of beliefs developed in childhood.
• A way to explain tragic events in their lives. 

It's a willing suspension of disbelief in one compartment of their lives.  When I hear from an intelligent believer that nothing could ever cause them to waver in their belief, that's prima facie evidence of a closed mind on that subject.  I'm reminded of when some people are being told something they don't want to hear, they stick their fingers in their ears and go "La-La-La-La ... " to avoid hearing those words.  They're afraid to have their beliefs challenged.  They're afraid to admit their security blanket might have no rational basis, and so might be unable to provide security, save that of the placebo.

Can We Prevent the Coming Tornado Disaster?

Recently, a photo taken from a AA baseball game shows a storm that is pretty close to the field and the players are still out on the grass in the open:

Some might think that's a tornado, but it's not ... it's an example of a so-called "shelf cloud" associated with storm outflow winds.  The primary danger to the players and fans in this photo isn't from a tornado but from strong winds and lightning.  A proper venue plan to mitigate those dangers would involve input from a meteorologist to provide a warning with enough lead time to protect the players and fans.  Such a warning could not offer absolute certainty, of course, and the venue operator may not wish to shut down the game, thereby losing profits, unless it's virtually certain that such action is needed.  Hence, the reason players are still on the field may be this profit-driven reluctance.

Note:  in baseball, I think it's the formal responsibility of the umpires to delay or call the game for safety reasons.  The referee has that authority in football.  Nevertheless, the venue operator no doubt bears some responsibility here.  There has been some improvement in sports venues to reduce the lightning threat, but this photo seems to suggest there's still a ways to go. 

Many of us meteorologists are concerned about the potential disastrous impact of storms on large venue activities:  ball games, amusement parks, concerts, and so on.  It's inevitable that a really bad storm will hit one of these events and cause mass casualties.  There are numerous examples of near-misses by significant tornadoes, for instance.  There's no reason to believe that good fortune will continue forever.  Rather, it's inevitable that a large venue event will be hit by a strong tornado.  It's frightening even to contemplate such a disaster.  Despite the efforts by some of us to heighten the awareness of this danger, the response has been less than overwhelming, as this image suggests.  What are the reasons for this reluctance to act on the potential for a disaster?

I've already mentioned the profit motive.  Cancelling an event hurts profits, and after all, the primary reason for an event is to make money.  It's my understanding that if such a catastrophe could reasonably be anticipated, it's the legal responsibility of the venue operator to have a mitigation plan and implement it.  Can this reasonably be anticipated?  I think I just did and I like to believe I'm being reasonable!

Venue operators must weigh the loss of profits against the potential losses through legal action after a disaster occurred for which the venue was unprepared.  I detect a bias in their responses toward ignoring the threat of those lawsuits in preference to those short-term profits.  And providing some sort of storm shelter for patrons could be expensive and remain unused for a long time.  For some events, it's hard to imagine any practical way to provide shelter for everyone.

In my experience, most people (not just venue operators) have no wish to learn about the real risks that confront them.  There's a lot of good information produced by the National Weather Service (and other sources, like FEMA) that's specifically intended to inform non-meteorologists about the threat from thunderstorms and severe weather.  Thus, the information is available.  Why might people not wish to learn about risks to their lives and well-being, thereby being prepared to take appropriate action?  I'm not a social scientist, and we have much to learn about human behavior, but I can speculate.  For one thing, many people have experienced storms and survived without harm.  A common phrase heard after the impact of a really bad storm is "I've never seen anything like that!"  People tend to assume their experience is much more representative of reality than it actually is.  If, in their lifetime, they've never been hit by a tornado, then without thinking about it, they can fall into the "normality" bias ... it's normal not to be hit by a tornado, so it's easy to assume that will continue forever!  People choose to accept myths as truth because they want those myths to be truth.

Rare events are inherently dangerous, because that rarity fosters complacency.  Why take the time and resources ($$) to prepare when you most likely will never have need for such preparations?  Never mind that someone experiences such an event virtually every year.  "It's not possible for that to happen to me!  It only happens to others!"  And commonly, after someone is hit, they say "My sense of security has been destroyed"  That sense of security was an illusion, not reality.

Someday, and I can't tell where or when, a 'perfect storm' of factors will result in a bad storm hitting a large event venue and mass casualties will result.  Then, the lawsuits will fly, and fingers of blame will be pointed.  We could reduce the chances that it will be a disaster by proper mitigation plans and measures.  Can a coming disaster be averted with mitigation plans and preparation?  Yes, of course!  The question is, however, will that disaster be so averted?  The jury is still out ... sad to say, it may take a disaster to cause much movement toward mitigating the potential for more disasters.  We humans tend to learn lessons the hard way.

"Hyping" the forecast?

I've been hearing the word "hype" bandied about in the context of weather forecasts recently - This begs the question of the meaning of the word "hype" ... from Dictionary.com:

hype: verb (used with object), hyped, hyp·ing.
1. to stimulate, excite, or agitate (usually followed by up ): She was hyped up at the thought of owning her own car.
2. to create interest in by flamboyant or dramatic methods; promote or publicize showily: a promoter who knows how to hype a prizefight.
3. to intensify (advertising, promotion, or publicity) by ingenious or questionable claims, methods, etc. (usually followed by up ).
4. to trick; gull.

Presumably, the implication when people refer to forecasts being "hyped" is that some forecaster is inappropriately exaggerating the threat posed by some event.  This seems to suggest definition #4: a "trick" to fool someone, presumably the users of the forecast.  The questions are if and why a forecaster deliberately would imply a greater threat than s/he actually believes will happen. A deliberate intent to deceive seems improbable to me in most cases.

If you disagree with the forecast, however, that's an entirely different issue.  Prior to an event, it's far from impossible that opinions regarding a weather forecast could vary.  We only know afterward with certainty who was right about the forecast.  If someone typically overforecasts the intensity of weather events, that should be evident in the verification.  [If no verification is done, that's a clear signal of a lack of commitment to forecast quality.  Never trust a forecaster who doesn't make known his/her verification statistics!] I've known forecasters prone to see disasters looming on the forecast horizon to a far greater extent than was justified by subsequent events.  Others are disposed to excessively conservative forecasts - downplaying rather than hyping. 

If the intent is not to deceive but rather to stimulate a response to the threat posed by the forecast event, is that necessarily wrong?  When a forecaster sincerely believes a forecast event poses a major threat, why not dramatize the putative impending event?  Severe weather in its many forms poses a real danger and people have a right to be informed of what could happen - they also need to know something about the uncertainty of the forecast, in order to make proper decisions for themselves about how to react.  The forecast may not be accurate, but I see no reason to infer some sort of bad intent from that.  This falls under definitions #1 and/or  #2, as I see it.  Does disagreement justify the pejorative description of "hype"? 

Given the widespread apathy generally evinced by weather forecasts, perhaps some exaggeration is called for?  To me, this represents a line that should never be crossed by an ethical forecaster.  Exaggeration of the threat beyond the forecaster's perceptions of what the actual forecast calls for is not ethical.  There might indeed be some temptations to exaggerate:  to stimulate a response from an apathetic audience, to magnify the event for the sake of making the forecaster seem important, to increase viewer ratings, and so on.  None of them justify this sort of action, which I would put in definition #3 - unethical forecast actions.  If a forecaster wants to be trusted, they should never exaggerate the threat posed by the weather.

Forecasting is inherently vulnerable to second-guessing, especially when the uncertainties have not been included as an essential part of every forecast.  Inevitably, it's not possible to get all the details right in a forecast - every forecast is wrong to a greater or lesser degree, and some users may be inappropriately upset about the finite capabilities of forecasters.  They should know better, but that doesn't stop them.  When forecasters take heat from other meteorologists for drawing attention to the dangers associated with the event they're forecasting, simply because there's a difference of opinion about the forecast, that's overdoing the criticism, in my book.  Let those who have never busted a forecast cast the first stones!  Don't assume an ethical violation without due cause.

Tribute to Liz Quoetone

Today, on the 89th anniversary of the deadliest tornado in US history, a friend and colleague - Liz Quoetone - succumbed to cancer.  Her passing seems sudden and shocking to those of us who knew and admired her.  Liz was the embodiment of service to our profession of meteorology, and affected the lives of many, many people in a positive way.  She was a person passionately devoted to training operational meteorologists how to deal effectively with severe weather and has, no doubt, indirectly saved many lives as a result of her training.  Moreover, Liz was a deep thinker, who could cut to the heart of the issues of effective operations, and proposed innovative new approaches to operations that made use of the latest research.  Whenever she spoke on the subject, it was wise to shut up and listen!  

All of her huge professional contributions aside for the moment, Liz was a delightful person to be around.  She seemed always to be upbeat and looking forward to her next opportunity to enhance someone else's life.  Which she did frequently.  With the news of her passing, my biggest regret is missed opportunities to tell her how much I appreciated what she was doing and how impressed I was with her accomplishments.  And simply to say that it was a pleasure to be in her presence.  If we all could try to say occasionally what positive things we think about our friends and colleagues, the world would be a better place.

Liz Quoetone leaves this world a much better place for her having been with us.  May her close friends and family be able to take some solace from that.  They have my sincere condolences.

Building codes - brutally violated!

Today, I learned that an investigation of building construction practices in schools hit by the 20 May 2013 tornado in Moore, OK showed the schools were egregiously in violation of building codes.  Seven children died in the Plaza Towers school.  So how can this be happening?

The sad fact is that to anyone with any knowledge of construction practices, doing damage surveys virtually anywhere across the USA will understand how pervasive building code violations are in this nation.  When I participated in the FEMA Building Performance and Assessment Team (BPAT) survey of damage in Moore after the 3 May 1999 tornado in the company of a team of civil engineers, I was appalled by how widespread building code violations were in the rubble of the damage tracks I walked.  I have seen similar things outside of Oklahoma.  It's truly disgraceful how bad construction practices are in the USA.  And they have not changed appreciably since 1999, sadly.

Rural construction often is done in the absence of any local building codes.  But in most communities, local governments have adopted the standards of the American Society of Civil Engineers, more or less verbatim.  Through most of the US, the standard is that structures built to code should suffer no structural damage in winds of up to 90 miles per hour.  It can be argued (and I've done so) that in the tornado-prone parts of the USA, this requirement should be upgraded to match those in hurricane-prone parts of the US eastern and Gulf of Mexico coasts (120 mph).

But, as has been suggested by Tim Marshall, and by my own experience in damage surveys, many if not most structures in the USA aren't even built to that minimal code!  I repeat - how can this be happening?  It seems to me that there are at least three reasons for this blatant disregard of public safety.

Reason #1:  The builders have no financial incentive to build homes properly.  Homeowners typically have no clue about how to evaluate the structural integrity of their homes, and likely never paid any mind to what was actually going on at their homesite when the home was being constructed.  Building to code takes extra time and incurs additional cost for materials.  The builders often seek and are granted "exemptions" from various aspects of the building code by the community politicians.  Homebuilder profits increase when corners are cut and the code violations accumulate.  And some of them simply take outright illegal shortcuts to pad their profits. 

Reason #2:  There's no builder accountability for building code violations.  If the builder is sued for negligence, the company declares bankruptcy and there's nowhere to go for financial redress via the law.  The owner walks away scot-free, perhaps to form a new company and resume the same practices, without penalty.  Corporations and LLCs are created specifically for their executives to avoid personal liability for the practices of their companies.  The company assets can be seized, but the owners are free of accountability.  This is wrong in the case of builders, and needs to be addressed.  Repeat violations should result in the owners being charged and prosecuted as criminals!

Reason #3:  Code enforcement is not even marginally adequate.  Community politicians either don't care about building code violations or they may have been "convinced" by the homebuilders to oppose any attempt to strengthen building codes and/or code enforcement.  Code enforcement is limited by the need for multiple inspections as the structures are built, and inadequate staffing to do a rigorous job.  Code enforcers often join the construction industry in saying "Trust us, everything going on that you don't see is being done properly."  Unfortunately, the sad reality is that this is simply a monstrous lie. 

If you want your structure built to meet code, you essentially need to teach yourself what are proper construction practices and then be on-site every day as the builders work, to ensure they aren't taking code-violating shortcuts.  There are a few scrupulous homebuilders, but endorsements and certifications aren't reliable indicators of their commitment to proper construction practices.   You need to more concerned about structural integrity (and drainage, proper plumbing, and electrical) than about the granite kitchen countertop and the fancy fixtures in the bathroom.  Building in a saferoom as a storm shelter is much easier and less expensive when the home is being built than fitting one in retroactively.

If you don't have any idea of how your home was built, it's probably safe to assume it does not meet even minimal code requirements.  Likewise, the schools your children attend are probably in violation of code requrements - likewise for churches, workplaces, shopping centers, stores, community buildings, entertainment venues, and so on.  It's likely that finding and repairing all the code violations in your home (or other structures) would be so expensive, you'd never be able to afford it.  It's fortunate that the chances of your home being hit by the violent winds of a violent tornado are pretty small on an annual basis.  Most of the time, routine safety precautions will be enough to save your lives.  But every year, someone is hit by a violent tornado, and in some events, routine safety precautions aren't sufficient to save your lives.  Do you have an adequate tornado shelter?  Some unscrupulous shelter companies sell products that aren't sufficiently well-built to provide "near absolute" safety, so shelter buyers should do some homework and not accept claims at face value.

As it stands, there's little hope for a short-term solution to code violations.  The only way this can change even in the long-term is for concerned citizens to rally around the cause of putting some teeth into codes and code enforcement.  If we stay at "business as usual" the problem will never go away.

Some more thoughts about gun violence in the USA

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What information does a weather forecast contain?

A colleague of mine said something years ago that struck me as insightful:  every model forecast ever issued was wrong!  Wrong in some way or another, to a greater or lesser extent.  Obviously, some forecasts are better than others, but none of them have ever been absolutely perfect.  His point was to suggest that human forecasters need to avoid basing their forecasts purely on Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model output - a notion with which I agree fully.  However, the same can be said of every forecast ever issued by human forecasters, as well!  The reality is that we can never predict the weather with absolute certainty.  I've not the space nor the inclination to go into the details of why this isn't just my opinion (maybe later) - it is, rather, based solidly in our scientific understanding of the atmosphere.  So, put in terms of the information content of a weather forecast of any sort, a weather forecast is not a statement of what definitely and certainly is about to happen in the future, in detail.

Because weather has substantial impact on human society, it's obvious that people want to know what's going to happen weatherwise ahead of time.  I'm fond of saying "Yes, of course, and people in Hell want a glass of ice water!" - which I heard many years ago from a co-worker.  What people want isn't necessarily what they're going to get.  The fact is that we have never been able to provide that sort of information and there is every reason to believe we'll never have that capability.  That notwithstanding, our relationship to our users predominantly has been such as to perpetuate the myth that we can provide that with 100% confidence.  Users want something and we pretend we can give it to them.  Surely our users know by now that such a capability doesn't exist!  Their own empirical evidence is that we can't do it and that evidence is at least a contributor to the widespread notion that weather forecasts are inevitably and totally wrong.

If plausible bounds are put on what constitutes a good forecast (as opposed to a perfect forecast), it should be noted that these days, today's weather forecasts are correct (within those bounds) a high percentage of the time (e.g., for 24-h daily maximum and minimum temperatures within 5 degrees of the observed value, it's about 85% or better).  So our weather forecasts currently contain useful information (despite not being perfect), within some limits, out to about 7-10 days.  What you experience is usually fairly close to what we forecast most of the time.  Beyond that "predictability limit" of 7-10 days, our weather forecasts become no more accurate than what we would see if we simply forecast what climatology (i.e., the long term averages for a particular location, date, and time) says we should expect.  At that limit point, we say our forecasts no longer have any skill, relative to climatology.  The greater the lead time, the less accurate the forecasts (and the lower their skill), on the average, out to the predictability limit.

What I would like to have us do is re-negotiate the contract we have with the users of weather information.  We need to be able to provide them with whatever forecast information we have, including some sort of statement of the uncertainty associated with the information we have.  Let's put aside the existing relationship, in favor of putting information out that we actually have to capability to provide!  Now the language of uncertainty is probability, and I'm constantly being told that people don't want probability (the glass of water in Hell problem) or they don't understand probability.  You don't need to be an expert in probability theory to put it to good use, and many people are very familiar with the notion of odds (probability in another form).  What we are doing now, with the lone exception of precipitation probabilities, is pretending to provide absolute certainty.  The historical background of how Probability of Precipitation (PoP) was introduced is interesting but far more than I want to expound upon in this blog.  Whatever the problems are with PoPs, they are a far more meaningful way to express our forecast information than all the non-probabilistic elements in a weather forecast.  If we don't express our uncertainties, we are actually withholding information from forecast users!  That can't be a good thing, and it comes back to bite us, time and time again.

An analogy with sports is a fair comparison, at least to some extent.  Our predictions for who will win the Super Bowl in the pre-season have much greater uncertainty than the night before the game is actually played.  Even then, there remains some uncertainty, and reasonable people can disagree about the outcome right up to the time the whistle blows and the winner is known with absolute certainty.

Therefore, to answer the question posed by the title of this blog, a weather forecast contains the forecaster's best estimate of what that forecaster (who might possibly be an NWP model) anticipates is going to happen with the weather.  It's not a guess, but rather our assessment of the situation and what we believe is the most probable weather that will occur, at the time we issued the forecast, given the finite accuracy limits on the method used to create that forecast.  As new information comes in, that forecast can change, sometimes dramatically.  Our diagnosis of what is about to happen virtually never coincides precisely with reality, but at times we can get it fairly close, especially at the shorter lead times.

A weather forecast always should include information about forecast uncertainty and that is necessarily going to be more complicated to explain than just reading a list of numbers.  More information inevitably requires more effort.  If the user is going to make the best use of the information we reasonably can provide, the user must accept some of the responsibility to pay attention to the forecast, to learn what the forecast actually is saying.  If all you want is the numbers, then you've forfeited a good deal of the value the forecast is trying to provide.  The choice can be left up to the user.

Forecast frustrations

Yesterday's events in the southeastern US have revealed, yet another time, how frustrating it can be to be a forecaster.  Forecasting the weather well is not easy, and there is always the inevitable uncertainty in our forecasts.  Most of the angst forecasters feel when doing their job is derived directly from that uncertainty, and yet that very aspect of forecasting is inescapable.  Although not all forecasters are thoroughly committed to their work, most of those I know are indeed very much absorbed in trying to do their absolute best, all the time.  Forecasting is the most challenging task a meteorologist can tackle and anyone who thinks otherwise is welcome to have a go and see how it works out!

Therefore, it's extremely frustrating when forecasters provide good forecasts and people are still caught in bad weather situations, occasionally becoming casualties of that weather.  In 1987, the Midland, TX forecast office did a superb job with a tornado warning, but the small town of Saragosa was blasted by a violent tornado.  About 10 percent of the town population was killed, including several children!  The forecaster who issued the warning knew some of those killed, and he was devastated by what happened.  It was no consolation to him that he had done his part and done it well.  I was deeply moved by seeing his emotional state - years later, he was still racking his brain trying to think of what else he could have done to prevent the tragedy.  Most forecasters care very much about their job performance, because they know they can make a difference.

What does it take for a forecast to be effective?  Assume that the forecast is perfect (which is impossible).  Then, for that forecast to be effective, the users of that forecast must

1. receive the forecast information
2. understand the forecast information
3. know what to do with the information
4. believe the information
5. be able to take effective action based on that information
6. make the decision to take action when necessary

Every link in this chain is important for the final result.

The winter storm that hit the southeast yesterday affected people who aren't accustomed to such events.  Some were hit very hard with the weather, despite good forecasts well in advance.  Since I've been a professional meteorologist, it's always been frustrating to me that people who experience hazardous weather events that are relatively rare in their region often do little or nothing to prepare for them.  This is no laughing matter - the consequences can be dire.  If such weather events only occur once every 20 years or so, it seems easier and cheaper to do nothing to address their preparedness.  And many people ignore the forecasts, seeking to go about their ordinary business despite the extraordinary weather conditions.  It's as if they want things to be normal and somehow believe they can force the situation to be normal by behaving normally - in abnormal circumstances.  Users surely must believe the forecasts if they are to help themselves make the right decisions.  Was a lack of belief in the forecasts why so many were caught in life-threatening situations by yesterday's winter storm?  It might be helpful to do a serious survey to investigate the reasons.

If a particular form of hazardous weather is rare in your location, that doesn't mean it can never happen - only that it will be infrequent.  And yes, it can happen to you, in particular!  It's not just about hype and scare tactics - hazardous weather is serious business - definitely not a joke.  Sure, sometimes it turns out to be a false alarm, and forecasters try very hard not to have that happen - but uncertainty means it happens occasionally.  That doesn't mean you can dismiss the forecasts as hyperbole all the time!

It's always better to have something you might need in a hazardous weather event and it turn out that you didn't actually need it, than for you to need it desperately and not have it.  If you expect the best in a situation (e.g., "A tornado won't actually hit my house!"), nevertheless, it's prudent to prepare for the worst, right?  After all, your life and well-being, and those of your loved ones are potentially at stake.  That seems so obvious to me, it's just difficult to imagine why many people behave in ways potentially detrimental to their own self-interest.

I can't pretend to understand why some people refuse to recognize the value and importance of weather forecast.  Yes, the forecasts aren't perfect, but many times, those forecasts offer critically important information for the decision-making process.  A friend of mine told me years ago that "Where you stand on some issue depends on where you sit!"  From where I sit, it's silly and dangerous to ignore the information in a forecast of hazardous weather.  But evidently, from where some people sit, it's quite all right.

It's the job of the forecaster to make as accurate a forecast as possible, but forecasters have little or no control over what must happen to make that forecast effective!  Their primary responsibility is the production of an accurate forecast.  That's what they're educated and trained to do.  Forecasters are basically helpless when any link in the chain breaks - preventing those links from being broken isn't what they're educated and trained for.  It's likely that efforts to educate users about how to understand and use the information would be helpful.  Even if a serious public education campaign were to be done, it likely wouldn't be a perfect solution.
There are many agencies that offer information that can be life-saving regarding hazardous weather, including the National Weather Service, but users must accept the responsibility for their own safety - to learn and put into action the available recommendations.  We can lead the horses to water, but it's up to them to drink.
 

The indifferent stars - More musings about the meaning of life

A friend just posted on Facebook about how stars had to die for us to exist at all.  This stimulated a question in me:  should we worship stars because they died so we can exist?  After all, at least one popular religion worships a deity-figure who supposedly died on their behalf.  A modern physical understanding is that all the atoms that give us existence were cooked up in stars and released by supernovae.  Star stuff come to life, as the late Carl Sagan described us, contemplating our place in the universe.  Apart from notions that what we call 'reality' is simply an illusion, there can be no argument that stars are real.  There's abundant evidence that the core of scientific understanding about stars is in fact a valid interpretation of our star observations.  Those born in the 20th century and after are the first humans to have any understanding of what the stars actually are and how they work.  Our sun is a star, of course, and given that there have been sun-worshippers, why not star-worshippers?

But if stars aren't conscious beings, so far as we can tell, then how could they serve as deities for us, even as they surely are in a very real sense our creators?  We surely were not the product of a conscious intent of stars.  The stars are simply matter and energy, going about their star 'lives' following the laws of physics.  As they are born, mature, and decay, matter and energy flow through them, the atoms now constituting a star aren't the same atoms that made up that star when it was born.

Allow me a diversion into personal experience.  Many years ago, I had a revelation about thunderstorms.  Thunderstorms are not objects, in the sense that they represent a fixed collection of atoms and energy.  Rather, they are processes.   Atoms and energy flow through that process, producing the observations we can make.  Ignoring all the microscale events (quantum fluctuations, etc.), an object  (or, thing) is predominately made up of the same matter from one moment to the next.  A wooden stick, or the water in a sealed container are examples of "things".  If we burn that stick or allow the water in a container free access to its surroundings, there will be changes to the matter and energy distributions.  The stick or the water will be transformed and subject to various processes by which the atoms and energy will be re-arranged, re-combined, and re-distributed.  The stick or water will no longer be in its original form, but the sum of its energy and matter will still exist (remember E = mc² and the conservation of energy?).  A thunderstorm is a process and there's no clear boundary separating that storm from its environment - how does one draw a bag around a process by which atoms and energy flow through a process?  Where does that process begin and the environment end?

Curiously, we humans can be thought of in very similar terms; i.e., as processes.  The atoms and energy enabling everything we are and everything we can do change with time.  We're not made up of the same atoms and energy that made us up the day we were born, or even conceived.  Although we often think of ourselves as fixed entities, but our consciousness deceives us - it's part of a process that continues throughout our lives within us.  That process includes memories of earlier existence, obviously.  Only lately have we begun to plumb the depths of the connection between our consciousness and the matter that constitutes the framework of our consciousness, a lattice upon which our thoughts are operating.  We have much to learn about that but we do know that our consciousness doesn't survive the death of our bodies.  The existence of something else - call it a soul - that is claimed by some to live beyond our physical existence is unobserved and evidently unobservable, as well as unlikely.

Although stars have matter and energy flowing through them, like we do, I have no way of knowing whether or not stars have consciousness and can think of themselves as entities.  I rather doubt it.  In any case, our physical existence (and the existence of all living entities) is very similar to the existence of the nonliving part of the universe including the stars:  processes going about their business, necessarily obedient to the laws of the natural universe.  One could easily go from this vision of the universe to a sort of pantheism:  We are one with the universe, not man apart from it - a feeling that many have shared as they stared at the stars in the night sky.  Star worship would not be a completely absurd point of view, as the deaths of stars mark the beginnings of our creation in a real way, somewhat analogous to conception.  Science has  connected us inadvertently to something profound (as it often does):  we and the universe are one at a deep level.

The thing about the stars is that no one has a basis to argue that the stars had conscious intent for parts of their matter and energy to be transformed into human beings.  The stars, like all the rest of natural world insofar as we can tell, are absolutely indifferent about our existence.  The stars existed long before us, and will exist long after the human race is gone.  We could worship stars, but the stars can't reciprocate or benefit in any way from our worship.  Our lives have no meaning to the stars, any more than the lives of most particular stars have no meaning to us.  If a nearby star goes supernova and the Earth is bathed in deadly radiation, it will not be the stars punishing us for our transgressions.  Stars are neither good nor evil - but their existence was necessary for us to contemplate ourselves in the context of the universe.

Stars are far closer to us in spirit than some collection of late Bronze Age/early Iron Age mythology, for which zero tangible, credible evidence exists.  If someone feels they must worship something large and powerful, stars make more sense to me than the imaginings of ignorant barely-civilized people thousands of years ago.  If we're inclined to see a meaning for our existence, it's not at all obvious that if you reject Abrahamic religious mythology, there is any meaning to it whatsoever, outside of any meaning you might make up for yourself.  I'm fine with that.  What about you?

The Richard Sherman Brouhaha

If you follow NFL football at all, by now you surely know about the interview with Richard Sherman, Seahawks cornerback, after the game.  I think Mr. Sherman's response could legitimately be called an "outburst" - in subsequent interviews, he called 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree a "mediocre" receiver.  In short, he advanced the notion that he was the best defensive back in the league, whereas his opponent was not very good.  Since then, there has been a enormous amount of talk about the interview, with some apologists saying he was simply still caught up in the on-field emotions, some haters saying he showed himself to be a "thug", and a whole lot of other opinions running a broad gamut.

Of course, the play in question - the game-winning play - resulted in the ball being tipped away from Mr. Crabtree by Mr. Sherman, into the hands of another Seahawk player (linebacker Malcom Smith), ending a drive that might have resulted in a game victory by the 49ers.  As a result of the play, a Seahawk victory was sealed.  It was indeed a great defensive play, with the significance of it magnified by the harsh reality of playoff football:  the winning team goes on to the Super Bowl and the losing team goes home!  But it was just one play, and many other players played a part in the game outcome.  After all, football is a team sport, right?

My first reaction to the interview was that it showed Mr. Sherman to be rather immature - simultaneously bragging about his skills and denigrating the skills of his opponent.  It's been my observation that people who promote themselves, and especially those who do so also by diminishing others, are really expressing an emotional insecurity.  Such attitudes are not universal in the NFL, and most interviews with NFL players are characterized by statements of mutual respect between opponents, as well as gratitude for the contributions by other players on the team.  Playing and surviving in the NFL is tough, and I'm sure many players, even some of the greats, have their moments of insecurity.  There are diverse ways to cope with that, including (but not limited to) the sort of boasting and chest-beating of Mr. Sherman.  And a lot of chippy talk goes on amongst the players on the field during the game that isn't repeated in typical post-game interviews.

Of course, the media are bored with statements of mutual respect and the other cliches that dominate interviews with players:  we're going to play just one game at a time, the winning team played better than we did, the opponent we beat is a great football team, we're going to treat this game like any other game, etc.  Compared to such scripted banality, Mr. Sherman's outburst was a dream come true for the media!  At last!  A player whose responses weren't limited to the team script.  One by-product of Mr. Sherman's outburst is that he became the media's darling, and the rest of the Seahawks team was correspondingly pushed out of the limelight.   I wonder how much Mr. Sherman thought about that consequence before he spoke.

Sadly, another consequence of Mr. Sherman's outburst was a lot of venomous commentary directed at him by viewers of the interview.  Completely unwarranted statements, including the seemingly obligatory racist remarks, were made about Mr. Sherman by people whose knowledge of the player as a human being was virtually nil apart from the few seconds of the interview.  If someone pushes him/herself into the limelight, the result is always like this - opinions are like assholes, of course, and uninformed opinions often come from assholes.  Surely he realized what the response to his remarks could become.  The full range of blowback often includes opinions voiced by racists, and other morons of all sorts and descriptions.  The less said about such, the better.

Had Mr. Sherman chosen to respond with the standard cliches, there would be little notice given to his remarks - only a few folks complaining about how stupid and boring athlete interviews have become.  Instead, the whole run-up to the Super Bowl will be dominated by the fallout from this brief postgame interview.  The interview is larger than the game, at least in the media, for the moment.  If Mr. Sherman is torched by Peyton Manning and his receivers, or if Mr. Sherman pulls off some more great defensive plays, you can imagine the nature of the post-game "analysis" by the media!

Mr. Sherman is a Stanford graduate and evidently is both intelligent and articulate.  One might think that these traits would have prevented him from indulging in the outburst.  Perhaps he was still caught up in the emotions of the moment - I have no way to know that.  But the immaturity and implied insecurity remain, regardless of any "back story" or exculpatory explanations for the outburst.  It's difficult for me to respect self-promoters who publicly denigrate their opponents, no matter how well they perform on the field.

Perhaps later in his NFL career, Mr. Sherman will look back and regret the intemperate remarks he made.  Or perhaps he'll look back and see this moment as the key to a career filled with accolades.  Certainly there are historical precedents for the latter - Mohammed Ali (the self-proclaimed "greatest") comes readily to mind, or Deion "prime time" Sanders.  They weren't all braggadocio - it ain't bragging if you can do it!  His performance on the field over the coming years likely will settle that issue one way or another and if he performs well enough to achieve really high honors (e.g., the NFL HoF) then this flap triggered by his outburst is simply irrelevant and is perhaps only a footnote in his professional career.

Now can we let the dust settle and focus on the game?  Probably not ...

A tragedy or a harbinger?

As the people of Charleston, WV grapple with the challenge of contaminated water from a chemical spill into the public water supply, I probably reacted initially with a rather more partisan view than was appropriate.  My generally liberal views (although not entirely "liberal" - whatever that word might imply to you) saw this as a symptom of the "conservative" (i.e., Republican) position on environmentalism and regulation of industry.  Radically conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives ("radcons", for short) and their supporters seem hell bent on massive deregulation, so it first appeared obvious to me that this incident was inevitable fallout from radcon-backed industry deregulation.  It still seems that way to me.  Deregulation and gutting the budgets of regulatory agencies necessarily will lead to an increasing number of these "accidents" - which to my mind are not so clearly accidental when they arise from willful neglect. Imagine the airlines without the FAA and NTSB.  Or the drug industry without the FDA.  When Freedom Industries can escape culpability for this incident by simply declaring bankruptcy, something is horribly wrong.  The management of that company needs to be prosecuted and serve significant jail time.  And not in some country club-like minimum security prison, either!  Perhaps that experience would give them more empathy for the people they plundered ...

But I have to back off my finger-pointing at the radcons (a seemingly contradictory expression of the reality that "conservatives" - largely tea party types and religious fundamentalists - have become radicalized).  They don't bear the sole responsibility here.  Liberals and Democrats have contributed through their own sort of neglect and ineptitude.  Their opposition to the drive to create a mythical "free market capitalism" (which is really welfare for the rich and the creation of a nearly complete immunity for the rich from prosecution for violating regulations) has been mostly ineffective at convincing American voters that unbridled corporate greed is not in their best interest.  Many of the very people who are victims of corporate greed are voting for the radcons, despite what seems obvious to me:  the folks they're electing are victimizing the very voters who elected them!

The model of "free market capitalism" the radcons seem to be looking toward looks a lot more like industry under the Soviets or the Chinese Communists than some mythical ideal from our past.  The illusion that a "free market" is some ideal to which we must return is simply ignoring the history of corporate greed.  Around the beginning of the 20th century, the USA went through a period when it became politically necessary to break the power of the large corporations - known colloquially as "trust busting", championed by President Theodore Roosevelt.  Horrible abuses were rampant in industry, not unlike the situation we face today.  Much of the regulatory activity swept away in recent episodes of deregulation were put in place during the period of trust busting, to prevent the abuses we recently have begun to experience again.  What a surprise!  If you open the door again, the rats will always rush back in.

Incidents like Charleston's tragedy might well be more than just isolated incidents if the "corporations are people" folks have their way.  The Soviets and the Chinese ran/run their industries with virtually no safety regulation, low wages, and without any regard for environmental impacts.  Pretty much the same as USA corporations prior to the 20th century.  Under circumstances like that, where industry can operate solely for short-term profit without regard for their workers and the residents in the surrounding areas, "accidents" like Charleston become the norm.  With their oppressive control over the media, the Soviets and the Chinese could suppress any news leaks about local disasters - as yet, we haven't reached that point in the USA - yet.  

The hardships and uncertainty folks in Charleston, WV, are experiencing could become commonplace if we don't begin to regain control of corporate America.  Those 1%ers have transformed the economy into welfare for the rich by outsourcing their jobs to places with low wage expectations, bilking the public with outrageous Ponzi schemes and mismanagement of markets, pushing through massive deregulation of corporations and cutting the budgets of regulatory agencies, and numerous other abuses against the 99%.  And they're getting away with it, with the apparent approval of many within the electorate.  We seem hell-bent to return to the 19th century. 

I just don't see how an economy that drives the majority of people into poverty or at least reduces disposable income for the middle class can remain a prosperous one.  The greed that drives the corporations is ultimately self-destructive for us all.  If our existing economy continues down the road it's on, what will take its place when it collapses under the top-heavy weight of corporate abuse?  I don't believe those who have been bamboozled into voting for the radcons have any idea what they're supporting.  Somehow, we need to do something about that.

A Sucker Born Every Minute ...

In these times, it seems superfluous to present more evidence regarding the old adage (attributed to P.T. Barnum) that there's a sucker born every minute.  Social media are rife with ignorant nonsense.  Television is dominated by shows of monumental vapidity sponsored by products preying on people's narcissistic concern for their self-image.  Gambling casinos hum with activity 24/7.  Politicians convince people to vote for things that clearly are not in the self-interest of those voters.  And so on ...

Nevertheless, I'm moved to provide yet another example: the marketing of long-range forecasts.  Virtually any respectable meteorologist knows that our ability to forecast the weather accurately in a deterministic way decreases with increasing lead time.  For those of my readers who don't know what 'deterministic' means, consider this product:

Note that the high and low temperature forecasts in this National Weather Service (NWS) product are given to within one degree Fahrenheit for each forecast time.  This conveys no information about increasing uncertainty in the accuracy of the temperature forecasts, so this is a 'deterministic' temperature forecast.  There might be various ways to show that uncertainty, but this sort of product simply makes no attempt to do so.  

It should be evident to most people that uncertainty increases with time over the period of the forecast, but nevertheless it seems that many forecast users are uninformed about this.  The product above is not a 'long-range' forecast, of course, being less than a week ahead.  Beyond a week or so into a forecast, the accuracy of weather forecasts is no better than what you would find if you simply forecast the local climatological averages for that date in the future - in technical terms, after about 8-10 days, the forecasts have no skill over a 'climatology' forecast!  A skillful forecast is one that is more accurate than some standard forecast method, such as random guessing, persistence (every day will be just like today), climatology, or whatever standard you wish to choose.  [Accuracy refers to the difference between what is forecast and what is actually observed.  Accuracy and skill are not synonymous!]

The same is true for the sky conditions and sensible weather forecasts in the product above.  However, observe that the weather forecast for "tonight" mentions a "chance" of freezing drizzle.  What does the word "chance" mean to you?  Do you think everyone interprets that word the same way?  This language is at best an attempt to describe uncertainty, but it uses words for which the meaning is unspecified.  The language of uncertainty is probability and a proper forecasts should always contain information about the uncertainty. 

In 2012, AccuWeather began issuing long-range forecasts out to 45 days, well beyond the 8-10 day limit of skillful predictability.  In those forecasts, no uncertainty information is provided, so to the user, the level of precision in the forecasts beyond the predictability limit looks just the same as the forecast for tomorrow, which is at best a deceptive practice, arguably bordering on unethical.

Recently, a study of the accuracy of the long-range forecasts from AccuWeather for selected cities was done.  That study shows what any meteorologist already knew:  AccuWeather forecasts exhibit no positive skill over climatology beyond about 8-10 days (or less) and in most cases show negative skill beyond that of climatology after that time. The important information that the uncertainty increases with time is not an explicit part of their forecast.  For NWS/NOAA forecasts out beyond a week or so, there's a different sort of product suite - see here - that provides a non-deterministic sort of forecast product.

Most users typically don't keep track of what the forecast was even a week ago, to say nothing of the forecast 45 days ago!  They also don't typically subject the forecasts to rigorous verification analysis.  Hence, they naively 'look at' long-range forecasts and perhaps even use them to make personal decisions.  It would be interesting to interview a cross-section of users of those long-range forecasts to ascertain their opinions regarding their value and how they go about dealing with the decline of accuracy with time in the forecasts.  It's hard to imagine how an unskillful product would be of much value to users ...

It seems that many people are at least attempting to use long-range forecasts somehow, and private sector companies provide their clients with what they want.  Unfortunately, such products are not what users need, which is a forecast with uncertainty information included.  When users aren't informed about forecast uncertainty, they have to guess for themselves how much faith to put in those forecasts.  Capitalizing on user ignorance by issuing deterministic long-range forecasts beyond 8-10 days is a shameful practice.  Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware!!

The Morale of Federal Employees

 A blog about the causes for low morale among Federal employees just came out from NPR.  I disagree strongly with the final take-away message of this blog regarding Federal employees:  ' "They're there for the salaries and benefits," he says. "They're not there because the jobs make them happy." '  I can't speak for all Federal agencies, but that statement is simply wrong about the majority of the NOAA employees with whom I worked.  I wrote my own web essay about the rewards for idealism in the NWS, and I believe it comes much closer to reality in ascribing causes for low morale in the NWS.

Management of Federal agencies is far from uniformly bad, but I believe most Federal employees who actually care about their work (certainly not all employees, but the majority in my experience) find their greatest frustration in the words and deeds of their own management.  NOAA managers have been singularly ineffective in acting on behalf of their agency's needs, have failed to enhance the ability of their employees to be effective at their jobs, and have created an atmosphere of fear in the organization whereby most employees with complaints and criticisms are cowed into silence by the threat of retribution.  The working employees, in their wish to serve the needs of the agency's customers, are being hampered constantly by their managers.

For an outsider, like the author of this NPR article, to come to such outrageous conclusions is seriously inaccurate, and insulting to thousands of Federal employees passionately dedicated to their jobs.  National Public Radio should be ashamed to have 'published' this piece.  It's extremely shoddy journalism and provides support to the canard that characterizes Federal employees as overpaid, underachieving parasites on society, enriching themselves while offering little or nothing of value in return.  Can such Federal employees be found?  Yes, of course - most of them in the ranks of agency management, with a small minority amongst the 'worker bees' (the employees who actually do the productive work of their agencies).  Likely there's variance in this respect within the broad spectrum of Federal agencies.

During my career, I had an opportunity to work part-time within a group of folks (in a Federal agency I won't name) whose job it was to provide a service.  Among the employees with whom I worked, there was a widespread attitude of contempt for the customers their group was charged with serving.  I don't know from whence this attitude came, but it pre-existed my arrival and I naively accepted it as the standard for how I approached the job.  Our team manager became aware of this and called a group meeting where he proceeded to tear us a new asshole - rather than treating our 'customers' with contempt for not knowing how to do the paperwork, we were to provide help as needed to expedite the needs of customers, without the contempt and without the hassle.  I was ashamed of what we'd been doing because I'd been on the receiving end of similar treatment during my professional career and understood only too well how that made me feel.  Why did I not recognize this and behave differently?  OK - lesson learned.  No doubt that such attitudes can be pervasive in many service organizations, Federal and non-Federal.  However, the employees can be made to understand that such non-performance is unacceptable, if that's the culture at the top.  When top management is more concerned about other issues than customer service, then it's understandable that the agency might well be peppered with bad attitudes.  No doubt a lot of the negative perceptions of Federal employees stems from interactions with Federal agencies where customers were treated badly.  It takes very few experiences of contempt from a service organization's employees to produce a deeply negative perception, no matter how well the majority of employees perform.

Federal employees are an easy target.  They're typically not allowed to respond to what politicians (and their own managers) say.  Politicians love to demonize them as a force resisting whatever policy changes the politicians want to make - changes often more political than helpful and uninformed in the extreme about what the agency actually does and why it operates in a certain way.  Sadly, this NPR article only reinforces the view that Federal employees deserve to be targeted.

Whither goest operationally-relevant severe storms research?

As part of my post-NOAA employment, I've been funded (part time) for several years by grants from the National Science Foundation.  Before that, I worked in NOAA as both a forecaster (for a time) and as a research scientist.  In particular, after retiring from NOAA, I forged a particularly exciting and productive collaboration with some outstanding colleagues, exploring the connection between synoptic-scale weather systems and major tornado outbreaks.  We had an initial 3-year grant and were able to renew that grant for another 3 years.  During those 6 years, we had a quite substantial number of papers accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals: something on the order of a dozen or so.  And two of our grad students earned their doctorates and are now working as university faculty.  But we failed to obtain funding for a third 3-year grant - the reviews were very mixed, with some very high ratings but also some pretty negative ratings.  On that basis, NSF declined to fund us.  I know it sounds like sour grapes to complain about the process.  We did get 6 years of funding, after all.

What's particularly bothersome to me is that I felt that the really exciting results were going to come in this next grant.  We didn't have any particularly profound insight to explore, but we had some ideas that seemed promising, and our track records as leading professionals in our fields suggested that our ideas deserved the benefit of the doubt.  But no.  Not happening.  I realize that just because we're scientists with extensive publication records doesn't mean our ideas should be accepted automatically.  But in reading the negative reviews, it seemed the reviewers either didn't read the proposal very carefully or weren't qualified to offer comments on our proposal.  This isn't a rare experience - in today's tough economic times, it's really hard to get proposals funded, regardless of their merits.  We're far from alone in being thwarted by the NSF funding process.  I see no conspiracy, but I'm quite dissatisfied by the way we were reviewed.  As a matter of fact, we weren't only turned down - we were turned down twice!  Either we're no longer capable of doing important severe storms research, or something went awry along our path.  How do we go from being successful researchers to incompetent overnight?

During the course of my career, it became evident early on that I had little or no competition for my chosen career path - to be on the interface between operations and research.  Not all of my work has been operationally relevant, but that's always been the perspective toward which most of my research has been directed.  I've wanted to do basic research into physical processes, but with an eye toward applying any understanding gained to operational weather forecasting.  With the end of my professional career in sight, I look about and see very few individuals with a similar bent in my subdiscipline.  Hence, my question:  who will continue this effort? 

Not having the funding to do the work means it's likely that the work we wanted to pursue won't be done any time soon.  It will be up to someone else to learn what we hoped to learn.  In a recent conversation with an operational forecaster, it seems that when it comes to most of the critical issues in severe storm forecasting, there isn't much being done.  Our work likely wouldn't have resulted in a dramatic breakthrough (although such a possibility existed) - an optimistic but plausible outcome would have been an improvement in the false alarm rate for outlooks of major tornado outbreaks by, say, 10-20% while keeping the probability of detection at current levels.  And our findings could be converted into an operationally useful forecast guidance system.  That wouldn't be a breakthrough, but it would be operationally useful and valuable to the science.  That would have been a nice way to end my career as a professional researcher on that interface but, alas, it seems now that it won't come to pass.  It ends not with a bang, but with a whiny blog.

This isn't my first funding disappointment.  I noted recently I've been honored with some end-of-career awards.  I really appreciate those awards, but I'd gladly trade them all for having been given the enthusiastic support to do more of the work I love.  As a former supervisor once said - "Don't tell me my work is wonderful but at the same time give me no support for the work I want to pursue!" 

A waste of state resources

Over and over, of late, we hear about state legislators in diverse states around the US passing laws to allow school-sanctioned prayers (and other things, such as christian icons) into public schools.   What really puzzles and frustrates me about this is that if they succeed in passing laws of that sort, those laws can't possibly stand up to to judicial review, because they're unconstitutional!

The Constitutional separation of church and state isn't intended to keep little Johnny from praying at any time he wishes.  Or to prevent little Suzie from having a drawing of jesus or a cross on her notebook.  The issue is simple: if a religious activity is carried on with the support of the school staff in their official capacity, it's unconstitutional.  Individual students remain free to practice any religion however they wish, but when the school administration is involved, it's a violation of the "establishment" clause.  This also doesn't preclude learning about religion in class, provided it's not confined to learning about a single religion.  Courses in comparative religion or that include material about religion in a historical context are not at all a problem. 

Why does the christian right-wing insist on importing their religion into public schools?  Why not leave religion out of public education and keep it in the home or in a church (by any other name) where it belongs?  It seems evident to me this is a rallying cry to attract religious believers to a particular political cause.  These efforts by legislators are doomed to fail in the courts and even politicians are, for the most part, intelligent enough to know this.  The legislation is an appeal to the constituency of the religious right (I like to call it the religious reich) - it's more of a political movement than a religious movement.

If passed, these laws are destined to be challenged in court and, eventually, they'll be declared unconstitutional.  In the process, the state will have to spend millions of dollars to fight these court battles.  Taxpayer dollars.  From all taxpayers.  That includes many who aren't christians and have no reason to support these laws in the first place.  Those dollars are precious in these difficult economic times, since they could be spent more productively in trying to solve some of the really serious economic shortfalls in states where these laws are proposed and passed - such as crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), supporting public transportation, funding public education improvements, supporting first responders (police and fire), etc.  Stupid, unconstitutional laws are simply a waste of those resources and clearly fail to represent the wishes of minority members of the population:  non-christians and atheists, for instance.

A "success" in implementing laws that establish state-supported religious activities signals the encroachment of a theocratic form of government.  It's in the best interests of all members of society, including christian believers, to retain and enhance the separation of church and state, not to reduce it.  In fact, we need to roll back some of these intrusions that have crept in over the years - such as on our currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance - during times of political paranoia.

Freedom and liberty are beneficial to everyone and the intrusion of a particular religion into government ultimately would be detrimental to everyone but a chosen few - we already have examples in the present and past to look to for a lesson in what would follow the establishment of state religion in the US.  Those who are advocates of pushing religion into public schools are not really about freedom of religion - quite the opposite.  They have the arrogance to believe their view is the only right one and, if permitted, they'd force everyone to bend to their beliefs.

This says nothing about the efforts of the religious reich to push their beliefs into science classes in the public schools.  I'll say no more about that here, but it's clearly part of an organized effort to push the christian religion into public education.

They cry "persecution" when their plans are thwarted - but it's not even close to persecution or restriction of their freedom to practice their religion.  They claim their rights are being violated when they're blocked from violating everyone else's rights!!  The "pushback" the religious reich is experiencing is about preventing them from forcing their politics/religion on everyone else.  It's about retaining the diversity and a commitment to quality education that's been of so much value to this nation over its history. 

The taxpayers in states where these laws are being proposed need to let their representatives know they don't want their taxes wasted fighting for religious intrusions into public institutions.  Those politicians need to get the message:  quit wasting time and resources fighting battles destined to be lost, that only serve the interests of some of the people.  There's important work to be done!  Forcing the christian religion into public institutions violates the US Constitution!

Inevitable uncertainty in weather forecasting

A recent blog I read made an effort to explain probability in weather forecasting.  From my perspective, it fell rather short of an explanation.  Hence, this effort, which no doubt will also fall short.

In the early days of my science education, I was convinced that perfect weather forecasts were an inevitable outcome for the science of meteorology.  With time, my confidence in that outcome was eroded, and the famous 1963 paper by meteorologist Edward N. Lorenz (that started the notion of "chaos") put the nails in the coffin of  perfect deterministic forecasting.  Simply put, perfect deterministic forecasts are just not possible.  This is no indication of a shortfall in atmospheric science - it's a fact associated with the way the atmosphere works.  To make perfect forecasts, we would need infinite amount of perfectly accurate data and have a perfect physical understanding of all processes that affect the weather.  None of those conditions will ever be realized.  The farther into the future we attempt to forecast, the greater the uncertainty.  And the uncertainty itself is uncertain - we know it varies from day to day, and in one location versus another.  Forecasting has definitely improved over the time of my professional career, but it cannot ever become perfect.

Since we don't observe the weather perfectly, we don't even know exactly what's happening in the present, and that's obviously a major challenge to our ability to know the future.  Forecasts can only decrease in accuracy with time, and at some point, our forecasts become indistinguishable from random guessing.  That point is the so-called "predictability limit" - it isn't a hard number (it varies!), but is somewhere around 7-10 days.  Beyond that time, the best forecast (statistically) is climatology.  When you see predicted high and low temperatures for a week in advance, those values are far less certain than the values for tomorrow, even if your source doesn't inform you of that declining confidence.

Along the way to my enlightenment regarding deterministic forecasts, I had the good fortune to meet the late Allan H. Murphy, who explained to me that subjective probability estimation associated with forecasting is tied to the forecaster's confidence in a particular outcome - and that this a perfectly acceptable form of probability.  That different forecasters might have a different probability estimate is bothersome, but when the forecasters are properly 'calibrated' in their confidence, their forecasts tend to converge to similar values.  Forecasters can become quite good at estimating forecast uncertainty, although this skill varies from one forecaster to another.  As I write this, considerable research is underway to seek strategies to help forecasters estimate forecast uncertainty.

Allan spent a lot of his life trying to overcome stupid objections to the use of probability, and I've done some of this, as well (e.g., here, here, here, and here).  I'm not going to repeat all that here.  Our main challenge is to try to figure out a way to express the inevitable uncertainty in our forecasts in a way that's helpful to those trying to use our forecasts to make decisions.

People all the time are griping about probability in weather forecasts - they apparently want us to be absolutely certain - in pretending to be so certain, we meteorologists make the users' decisions for them.  And then those users will be upset when the forecast doesn't work out that way.  Users surely understand that we're not perfect, so it must follow that demanding we continue to pretend to be perfect is not going to work!  The unwritten contract between forecasters and users needs to be renegotiated! 

When probability was introduced in the mid-1960s in the US, it was done without a public information campaign explaining what the probabilities meant.  That gap in public education remains unbridged to this very day - most of the confusion over probability is not about the absence of understanding regarding abstract probability theory (which many meteorologists don't understand, either!).  The problem is that we don't know what the event is that is being forecast!  Is it a forecast for the eight inch diameter opening in the official rain gauge?  Is it an average probability over some region?  What is the time period to which the probability refers?  We simply have never done what it takes to explain just what that probability number means to the public, so it's not surprising that the public struggles with this.  We must address this public understanding shortfall.

In the very non-homogeneous group known as "the public", there's some fraction of people who can use probability to make decisions quite easily, as well as those for whom probability is so mysterious as to be completely useless.  Is there a "one size fits all" method for getting weather information to users?  I doubt it, but I'd like to explore the issue of how to communicate uncertainty.  Before we start changing the format and content of our forecasts, the first rule is:  do no harm!  Don't change things before we know with some confidence that the change won't be deleterious.  We need a collaboration with the social sciences to come up with strategies for expressing the necessary uncertainty information in such a way that the users obtain the information they need.  We do our users a disservice by "dumbing down" our forecast products and using the public as guinea pigs in ill-conceived experiments.

Finally, it seems that "the public" has some responsibility of its own.  If people find our products confusing or unhelpful, they need to expend some effort on their part to become more knowledgeable.  I'm not saying the problems with communicating weather information are wholly the fault of the intended recipients, but rather that the recipients share some measure of the responsibility for that communication breakdown.