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Speaker 3: February eighteenth, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: Oh hi, it's that vitamin stuck in your throat. I'm
Speaker 4: so sorry, Ali Ward. How do I even start this? Okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to chechat about the weather in a way
Speaker 4: that is anything but small talk. As it turns out,
Speaker 4: the stuff that's all around us is just raging and
Speaker 4: swirling and heavy with emotion. And likewise, I don't even
Speaker 4: know how to preface this ologist experience. His bio is
Speaker 4: the longest list of accredations and awards and bonkers important
Speaker 4: jobs I have ever seen. I do not know how
Speaker 4: someone at chieves so much high level and deeply important
Speaker 4: work in one lifetime, and I'm shocked he said yes
Speaker 4: to do this. So several folks told me to find
Speaker 4: him and beg him to be friends, which I did.
Speaker 4: And this one has been in the works for a
Speaker 4: couple of years. So he got his bachelor's, his MS,
Speaker 4: and his PhD in Physical meteorology from Florida State University.
Speaker 4: He's been a NASA researcher, the president of the American
Speaker 4: Meteorological Society, where he now holds a rare distinction of
Speaker 4: being a Fellow. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career
Speaker 4: Award for Weather and Climate Research by the White House,
Speaker 4: and in twenty twenty one, he received the American Geological
Speaker 4: Institute's Award for Outstanding contributions to the public understanding of
Speaker 4: the geosciences. He's advised the US Senate, the Department of Defense,
Speaker 4: and Congress on climate and extreme weather. He's currently a
Speaker 4: Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University
Speaker 4: of Georgia, and this past year he was selected as
Speaker 4: Professor of the Year. He also co hosts the Weather
Speaker 4: Channel's excellent podcast Weather Geeks. He writes for Forbes. He's
Speaker 4: authored several books, including a kid's book called Doctor Fred's Weatherwatch. Frankly,
Speaker 4: I was lucky to weasele my way onto his schedule,
Speaker 4: so we hopped on our respective Mike's and I asked
Speaker 4: him all kinds of questions that were way below his
Speaker 4: pay grade. But before we get there, just a quick
Speaker 4: thanks to everyone who supports the show at Patreon dot
Speaker 4: com slash ologies a dollar or more a month gets
Speaker 4: you in the club, and you could submit questions ahead
Speaker 4: of time. Ologies merch is available at ologiesmarch dot com.
Speaker 4: And thank you to everyone who just supports by telling
Speaker 4: a friend or by rating or subscribing or leaving reviews.
Speaker 4: I literally do read them all in his proof. Thank
Speaker 4: you Zachary Dakery, who wrote this review this week, saying
Speaker 4: Ali Ward is the best thing to listen to while
Speaker 4: driving a garbage truck, best binge worthy podcast out there.
Speaker 4: I will even stop my truck to charge my headphones
Speaker 4: to keep listening for my entire shift. Drive safely, Zachary Dacre,
Speaker 4: thank you for the work you do. Everyone listened to
Speaker 4: discard Anthropology if you hadn't, it's such a good one,
Speaker 4: So thanks for the work. You do. I hope someone
Speaker 4: brings cookie your garage and if anyone left a review, no,
Speaker 4: I have read it. Okay, let's get into meteorology. Legend
Speaker 4: has it the field was named by Aristotle, who wrote
Speaker 4: a tome about weather and named it meteorologica, from a
Speaker 4: root word meteor for lofty. So stuff above us. So
Speaker 4: let's get to what is over our heads. Let's get
Speaker 4: into our domes and get ready for tornadoes, typhoons, wind, rain, forecasting, newscasting,
Speaker 4: wet bowl globes, wind chill, humidity, polar vortices, atmospheric rivers,
Speaker 4: bomb cyclones, storm chasing, climate delaying, pop cultural weather phenomena,
Speaker 4: and more. With the distinguished icon of Atmospheric Sciences, professor
Speaker 4: and lifelong meteorologist and weather geek, Doctor Marshall Sheppard.
Speaker 2: Doctor Marshall Shepherd. I guess I'm he But what else
Speaker 2: did you ask?
Speaker 4: Oh? That's it, that's all. Yeah. So I've been wanting
Speaker 4: to talk to you for literally years. Business.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Pretty exciting. They are one of the most celebrated meteorologists
Speaker 4: in the country and I'm sure you have to get
Speaker 4: you have to explain this a lot to people. But
Speaker 4: the difference between being a meteorologist and being a weather person.
Speaker 4: There's a difference.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so you know, I get called the weatherman
Speaker 2: a lot or the weather guy. And then you know,
Speaker 2: the really derogatory term that I hear from some of
Speaker 2: my female colleagues is when they call them weather girls.
Speaker 2: These are celebrated scientists with degrees. They're women, they're not
Speaker 2: weather girls. But yeah, you're You're really on to a
Speaker 2: point because the term meteorologists is synonymous with weatherman for
Speaker 2: most of the public. But there are different types of
Speaker 2: meteorologists in the same way that there are different types
Speaker 2: of engineers. In fact, only a small percentage of our
Speaker 2: field are TV meteorologists or what we call broadcast meteorologists
Speaker 2: or weathercasters. And even within that group there's a range.
Speaker 2: There are actually some people that have meteorology degrees, and
Speaker 2: you'll see the ams seal by their name typically or
Speaker 2: some other seal. There's some people that have more journalism
Speaker 2: backgrounds but report the weather and so forth, although there's
Speaker 2: less of that and more degree meteorologists. So, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: a meteorologist that doesn't do forecasting, and I'm not on
Speaker 2: TV unless I'm a special guest on the weather channel,
Speaker 2: or so he.
Speaker 3: Joins us now from Gwennette County, Georgia.
Speaker 4: Doctor Shepherd, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 4: When it comes to meteorology, how do you think that
Speaker 4: people choose their field, because I do think so many
Speaker 4: people think meteorology is just forecasting. But how did you
Speaker 4: pick what you do and what are some of the options?
Speaker 2: Yes, question. I got interested in this in sixth grade,
Speaker 2: as most meteor illists do. I did a science project
Speaker 2: kind of sixth grade or predict the weather that started
Speaker 2: because I got stung by a bee. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be an entomologist, but I got stung by a bee
Speaker 2: and found out I was highly allergic to beastings and said, well,
Speaker 2: I need a plan. B punt intended, and so I
Speaker 2: did my science project on weather. So at that point
Speaker 2: I was bitten by the weather bug. Second punt intended.
Speaker 2: And so from that point on, I knew I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be on TV pointing out a screen with colfronts,
Speaker 2: and I knew I didn't want to be a forecaster.
Speaker 2: I was more interested in the house and why of weather,
Speaker 2: like why does that hurricane get stronger than others? And
Speaker 2: wide are certain storms spent out tornadoes and some storms don't.
Speaker 2: And so that's when I started investigating schools and Florida
Speaker 2: State University. I'm from Georgia, and Florida State was the
Speaker 2: closest meteorology program. And the rest is hisstory. I went
Speaker 2: on to graduate school, ultimately got a master's in a PhD.
Speaker 2: Worked at NASA for a while developing large space missions
Speaker 2: to study weather and climate.
Speaker 4: So doctor Shepherd spent a mere twelve years as a
Speaker 4: research meteorologist at Nasogadard Space Flight Center and was the
Speaker 4: deputy Project scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, just
Speaker 4: casually one of the best meteorologists in the.
Speaker 2: World and now still do high level research, teach, and
Speaker 2: do a lot of other things as well. But to
Speaker 2: really answer the second part of your question, what are
Speaker 2: some of the other options? Again, I think about nine
Speaker 2: to ten percent of our field work as TV meteorologists.
Speaker 2: Others go into sort of more private sector for airlines
Speaker 2: or other commodities companies, power companies, energy companies, and so forth.
Speaker 2: There are quite a few meteorologists that work in federal
Speaker 2: agencies like the National Weather Service or NASA and Noah.
Speaker 4: So, Noah is not a guy or a biblical rising
Speaker 4: ocean's flood reference, but it just stands for the National
Speaker 4: Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, AIR and c EPA.
Speaker 2: State agencies have meteorologists, and then a lot of private
Speaker 2: companies are now developing interest in weather and whether it
Speaker 2: be IBM or formerly for that Panasonic and even smaller
Speaker 2: companies as well. So weather, there's quite a few places
Speaker 2: atmospheric scientists, which is the broader term including meteorologists and
Speaker 2: climate scientists can work.
Speaker 4: Is it such a good meteorology program at Florida State
Speaker 4: because there's so much weather there? Would that program suck
Speaker 4: in La?
Speaker 2: No? I mean UCLA has a really good meteorology program
Speaker 2: actually the bit so no, I don't think it has
Speaker 2: anything to do with the geography, although it does have
Speaker 2: a reputation for being pretty good at tropical meteorology expertise
Speaker 2: there so obviously being close to Florida. Even as we're
Speaker 2: recording this podcast today, Tallahassee, Florida, which is where Florida
Speaker 2: State is, is probably experiencing the tropical storm Nicole as
Speaker 2: we speak, and just FRII.
Speaker 4: So Nicole ended up being a Category one hurricane about
Speaker 4: seventy five miles an hour is what it made landfall
Speaker 4: at and it caused eleven deaths and five hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty million dollars in damages. And now, if a tropical
Speaker 4: storm develops in the North Atlantic or the North Pacific
Speaker 4: in the east off the coast of the US and Canada,
Speaker 4: and has sustained winds of seventy four miles per hour
Speaker 4: or faster, we call it a hurricane. But if they
Speaker 4: form over the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, they
Speaker 4: would like to go buy cyclones please, Well, then what
Speaker 4: are typhoons? This is a great question. I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 4: Those are the same thing. But they're over the Northwest
Speaker 4: Pacific off the coast of Asia. So we could do
Speaker 4: a whole episode on intraplanetary meteorology terminology, trust me. And
Speaker 4: what about learning about the weather on planet Earth versus
Speaker 4: working for NASA.
Speaker 2: We didn't study other planets whether we were studying weather. Yeah,
Speaker 2: NASA has a very robust Earth sign program. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's another misconception that I often get in the same
Speaker 2: way that people would ask me if I were with
Speaker 2: the weather. Most people hear NASA think space out and
Speaker 2: looking at Mars and places. But a large part of
Speaker 2: what NASA does and still does, is to develop missions
Speaker 2: to study Earth's weather, climate, oceans, volcanic eruptions, changes in
Speaker 2: the criosphere, which is like greenland and Arctic ice sheets,
Speaker 2: and are antarctics. So yeah, that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that I'm glad you asked because NASA studies planet. I
Speaker 2: argue it studies the most important planet of all Earth,
Speaker 2: because that's where we live and we're not going to
Speaker 2: be going anywhere for some time. So thankfully NASA devotes
Speaker 2: quite a bit of its resources and expertise to studying
Speaker 2: this planet using the vantage point of space.
Speaker 4: Mm hm, climate versus weather. How many times a day
Speaker 4: do you have to explain the difference?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know you're you're hitting all the common misconceptions
Speaker 2: that I deal with in my field. So this we're
Speaker 2: going to like take a number here. So you know,
Speaker 2: you know, it's getting to be the cold season, and
Speaker 2: you know, we'll start seeing snow and colder weather, and
Speaker 2: inevitably I'll have someone tweet me, hey, doctor Shepherd, I've
Speaker 2: got twenty inches of global warming in my yard. It's
Speaker 2: snowing out here in Boston. In January, why you guys
Speaker 2: keep talking about this climate change stuff. And so after
Speaker 2: I kind of fix my face and sort of roll
Speaker 2: my eyes a little bit, I say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: it's winter in Boston. You're supposed to get snow first
Speaker 2: of all. But then secondly, I say, you know, weather
Speaker 2: is your mood and climate is your personality. Something I'd
Speaker 2: like to say. You may have heard me say it
Speaker 2: that the weather today doesn't say anything about climate anymore
Speaker 2: than your mood tells me about your personality. And so
Speaker 2: it's a really ill posed premise to suggest it because
Speaker 2: it's snowing in Boston on Tuesday in January, that that
Speaker 2: somehow refutes climate change and global warming.
Speaker 4: Okay, so in a bit we're going to cover why
Speaker 4: a warming climate would make digging your car out of
Speaker 4: the snow a more giant pain in the ass. Trust me, Nerds.
Speaker 4: You know your podcast is called Weather Geeks. Do you
Speaker 4: feel like you are kind of geeky about this? Does
Speaker 4: it get you really excited? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah. No. The Weather Channel, when they came to
Speaker 2: me about hosting The Weather Geeks, we did it as
Speaker 2: a TV show for four or five years on the
Speaker 2: Weather Channel came on on Sunday afternoon, and then we
Speaker 2: just realized the changing landscape of how can people consume information?
Speaker 2: So we switched it to a podcast. Nice move, ken,
Speaker 2: and we embraced the term weather geek because people call
Speaker 2: us weather geeks anyway, or weather weenies or weather nerds.
Speaker 2: But we wanted to empower the term weather geek because
Speaker 2: you know, some people often use the term maybe in
Speaker 2: a more sort of derogatory or spiteful or slide I
Speaker 2: guess the word insulting manner. But we wanted to flip it.
Speaker 2: We wanted to own it, and so that's why we
Speaker 2: call our podcast weather Geeks.
Speaker 4: I love that it's something that you have so much
Speaker 4: knowledge and you're so authoritative about, but that you still
Speaker 4: love so much. Weather gets such a bad rap in
Speaker 4: conversation of people talking about the weather. But what could
Speaker 4: be more exciting than like, store, whether or not you're
Speaker 4: going to have to wear a jacket, or if your
Speaker 4: crops are going to grow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of those And you just even touched on
Speaker 2: another misconceptionist out there, because you're right, weather is often
Speaker 2: a conversation point and it makes us struggle. For those
Speaker 2: of us that are scientists in this field because everyone
Speaker 2: experiences the weather, and so because of that, everyone thinks
Speaker 2: they know as much about it as people would degree.
Speaker 2: And so I'll often have people come up and challenge
Speaker 2: me on the forecast or about climate change, and they're
Speaker 2: totally wrong, but you know, it's an opportunity to sort
Speaker 2: of share and educate. So for example, you know, people
Speaker 2: will often say, you know, whether you're all just in
Speaker 2: forecasts are wrong most of the time. Well, actually they're
Speaker 2: right almost all of the time, about ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of the time within three to five days. It's just
Speaker 2: that it's human nature for people to remember the bad ones.
Speaker 2: And they are few bad ones, but those are the
Speaker 2: ones they remember if their cookout was rained on or
Speaker 2: their child soccer game got it rained on. But you know,
Speaker 2: I'll use a football analogy. You know, a field goal
Speaker 2: kicker kicks a field goal and they make every single
Speaker 2: field goal all year long. That's a really good kicker.
Speaker 2: But if they miss one field goal in Super Bowl
Speaker 2: that could have won the game, people are going to
Speaker 2: be remembering and talking about that kick and wow, that kicker,
Speaker 2: he stinks, and oh my gosh, you know, fire him.
Speaker 2: But in fact, he's a really good kicker. He just
Speaker 2: missed that one. And so, you know, people don't tend
Speaker 2: to remember all the days that were right in terms
Speaker 2: of the forecast, so they sort of anchor on those
Speaker 2: sort of more isolated and fewer bad forecasts.
Speaker 4: So don't blame the messenger for the nature of statistics. Folks.
Speaker 4: Just keep an umbrella in your bag and a smile
Speaker 4: on your face. You're alive. And there are crickets and
Speaker 4: birds and sunsets and electricity and indoor plumbing. And how
Speaker 4: much has weather science changed since you've been studying it,
Speaker 4: and even just since the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 2: It's really, you know, quite a few changes. Just our
Speaker 2: ability to observe aspects of the weather with different types
Speaker 2: of satellites and race our systems and so forth has changed.
Speaker 2: The speed of computers means that our weather models have
Speaker 2: gotten so much better.
Speaker 4: And this part was absolutely news to me.
Speaker 2: You know, weather forecasting is done by solving these very
Speaker 2: complex fluid dynamics equations. That's why people that want to
Speaker 2: be a meteorologist have to take so much calculus and
Speaker 2: dynamics and thermodynamics and physics. You know, I, as a
Speaker 2: director of a major program, I have students come to
Speaker 2: me all the time. Oh I love clouds, I love hurricanes,
Speaker 2: I love storm chasing. I want to be a meteorologists.
Speaker 2: I want to be in your program. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's fine, I said, but how's your calculus and how's
Speaker 2: your physics and how are your partial differential equations because
Speaker 2: that's what's mostly going to be in the classes you'll
Speaker 2: be taking, and so it's a really an interesting sort
Speaker 2: of shock to the system for many of these students.
Speaker 2: But you know, the observations, the computing capacity and capabilities.
Speaker 2: One thing that's really big right now is social sciences.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of psychologists and sociologists and communications
Speaker 2: experts working at the intersection of weather right now because
Speaker 2: they're trying to understand how people receive information about forecast.
Speaker 2: Do they make decisions based on a red morning boxer,
Speaker 2: do they hear certain things a certain way, and so forth.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of an emerging area, as is artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: That's why companies like IBM and various others that come
Speaker 2: to mind tomorrow, Io and others are really using sort
Speaker 2: of advanced data technologies to mine all of this data
Speaker 2: to make precision information forecasts. Weather intelligence, if you will.
Speaker 2: For you know, agriculture, for business, industries, energy companies, infrastructure.
Speaker 2: So that's the main thing on the weather front. Now
Speaker 2: on the climate front, it's obviously the increase in CO two.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I mean I wrote an article in Forbes.
Speaker 2: I'm a contributor to Forbes magazine, and I said, what's
Speaker 2: your CO two number? In other words, you can everyone
Speaker 2: has a birthday, but go look at that birthday that
Speaker 2: year and see what the parts per million CO two
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere was when you were born and compare
Speaker 2: it to today, and some of us that are older,
Speaker 2: you will be really scared, you see it, because we're
Speaker 2: well at around four hundred and twenty parts per million
Speaker 2: right now. Our atmosphere is, you know, responding to that.
Speaker 2: Our seas are responding to that. Our ecosystems are ice sheets.
Speaker 2: So our climate has changed in response to human activities
Speaker 2: and the burning of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 4: And I'll link doctor Shepherd's Forbes article on my site,
Speaker 4: but you can also go to nature dot org and
Speaker 4: calculate the CO two levels in your birth year. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like astrology, but sadder. And today I learned
Speaker 4: that carbon dioxide has increased by twenty five percent in
Speaker 4: the scant time that I've been digging around on this planet,
Speaker 4: and this fact can be a real vibe changer, so
Speaker 4: to speak. How is that personality affecting our mood? I
Speaker 4: know that I feel like in the last few years
Speaker 4: we've heard more about bomb cyclones and names for blizzards
Speaker 4: and storms and hurricanes that I had never heard of
Speaker 4: growing up. But how is that climate affecting the weather?
Speaker 2: Well, and you know that's just the media, actually, I
Speaker 2: mean bomb cyclones and and these terms have been around
Speaker 2: forever in meteorology. They should just have been used more
Speaker 2: in the popular media. So I wouldn't use those as
Speaker 2: anchors of something different about the climate. Because bombogenesis and
Speaker 2: rapid and these are very common weather terms, polar vortex,
Speaker 2: these are terms that have been around in meteorology if
Speaker 2: you study meteorology for decades, So there's nothing new about
Speaker 2: those terms.
Speaker 4: Let's do a lightning rundown of some of the ones
Speaker 4: you probably thought were just meteorologists yank in your chain. So,
Speaker 4: bomba genesis happens when a cold air mass collides with
Speaker 4: a warm one and the barometric pressure drops fast in
Speaker 4: a low pressure system. So some of the other fun
Speaker 4: things that you can call a bomba genesis include explosive cyclogenesis,
Speaker 4: a weather bomb, a meteorological bomb, or a bomb cyclone.
Speaker 4: And at one point someone was like, shouldn't we stop
Speaker 4: calling this a bomb? It's very scary to the people,
Speaker 4: And a meteorologist was like, you call them cold and
Speaker 4: warm fronts, like it's a war, so shut your rain hold.
Speaker 4: You cowered, And a bomb cyclone it was. Now. A
Speaker 4: polar vortex is a bunch of cold air near the
Speaker 4: poles of the Earth, and it's called a vortex because
Speaker 4: it's spinning, spinning, spinning, and in the winter it gets
Speaker 4: bigger and parts of it kind of get caught up
Speaker 4: in the jet stream and then they blast your whole
Speaker 4: face with colder Arctic air. Now, a pineapple express is
Speaker 4: another that's got to be fictional weather term, but it's true,
Speaker 4: and it's like one hundred years old in terms of terms,
Speaker 4: but it's when colder, low pressure air from like the
Speaker 4: Gulf of Alaska meets up with some high pressure West
Speaker 4: coast winds plus a little bit of Hawaiian aka pineapple moisture,
Speaker 4: and it forms this thing called an atmospheric river, which
Speaker 4: is a long, thin thread of wet weather. They can
Speaker 4: carry sometimes as much moving water as the Amazon River apparently,
Speaker 4: and you can call an atmospheric river a tropical plume
Speaker 4: or a water vapor surge or cloud band. But just
Speaker 4: keep a rain slick or handy.
Speaker 2: But having said that, we know that climate change is
Speaker 2: impacting our weather. Today. We have more intense rainstorms, our
Speaker 2: heat waves have more intensity and are happening with more frequency.
Speaker 2: Rapid intensification and the intensity of hurricanes is likely responding
Speaker 2: to climate change. There's greater sea level, a higher sea
Speaker 2: level amount, so when these storms push inland, they are
Speaker 2: actually pushing more water, and so you see more storm
Speaker 2: search damage. And even without the storms, just the higher
Speaker 2: sea level itself causes problems. We see changes in drought,
Speaker 2: which ultimately ends up affecting the cost of things we
Speaker 2: buy at the market or the grocery stores. There are
Speaker 2: mosquitoes that carry diseases that used to live in the
Speaker 2: tropical regions of the planet, but now they can live
Speaker 2: in the United States and carry those diseases.
Speaker 4: What diseases you ask, You want a little sampler platter
Speaker 4: of them? Okay, well, I asked a twenty twenty one
Speaker 4: paper published in the Lanset called Projecting the Risk of
Speaker 4: Mosquito borne Diseases in a warmer and more populated World,
Speaker 4: which said that in the next thirty years, nearly half
Speaker 4: a billion more people on the planet could be at
Speaker 4: risk for contracting mosquito born diseases such as yellow fever,
Speaker 4: zeka dangay, and chicken gaya, which I'm sorry sounds delicious,
Speaker 4: but it's a disease. Also, things like heat islands in
Speaker 4: densely populated cities may up the risks of malaria and
Speaker 4: dengey arriving right on your doorstep ding dong hi here
Speaker 4: to kill you.
Speaker 2: There are a host of ways there. I often like
Speaker 2: to talk about climate change in terms of what I
Speaker 2: call the kitchen table issues, the so what. For too long,
Speaker 2: we've talked about climate change in terms of polar bears
Speaker 2: in the year twenty one hundred. Climate change is now.
Speaker 2: We've got to stop using future tints. We're living it
Speaker 2: right now, and it's likely going to accelerate in the
Speaker 2: same way we saw at the COVID pandemic. It started
Speaker 2: and accelerated rapidly. That's what we worry about as scientists
Speaker 2: right now. But the good news in terms of your question,
Speaker 2: is we know. I don't like the sort of even
Speaker 2: harbor on just the bad this is happening because we
Speaker 2: know that that is what it is. But we know
Speaker 2: what needs to be done. That's the good news. If
Speaker 2: anyone's listening to me and say, well, what's the optimism,
Speaker 2: the optimism is this is not a problem where we're
Speaker 2: scratching our heads like what we need to do. We
Speaker 2: know what we need to do. We've got to reduce
Speaker 2: carbon emissions to do list, and we have technologies and
Speaker 2: processes to do that. And in some cases we also
Speaker 2: have to adapt. Things are already sort of past the
Speaker 2: point of not non change. It's going to change, so
Speaker 2: we have to develop adaptation strategies. Give you an example
Speaker 2: out west. I know you're you're talking to me from
Speaker 2: out west. Up in the Pacific Northwest. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: there was a tremendous heat wave. People just aren't used
Speaker 2: to that type of heat in parts of the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: Many homes don't have air conditioning, and there were many
Speaker 2: deaths because of that heat.
Speaker 4: And just a side note, so this heat wave in
Speaker 4: June and July twenty twenty one reached one hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty degrees fahrenheit in Canada, folks. And it was a
Speaker 4: once in a thousand year weather event, they said, and
Speaker 4: it was one hundred and fifty times more likely to
Speaker 4: occur because of climate change. It was a cost nearly
Speaker 4: nine billion dollars financially, but fourteen hundred lives lost to
Speaker 4: heat related deaths. So global warming is not a future issue,
Speaker 4: it's now. So what can we do immediately?
Speaker 2: So an adaptation strategy might be to retrofit many of
Speaker 2: those homes with air conditioning now that don't have homes
Speaker 2: because they may not have expected that type of heat
Speaker 2: in Portland in the same way that in London this
Speaker 2: year it got to one hundred and four degrees. Eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of homes in London do not have air
Speaker 2: conditioning because they never expected those types of temperatures. So
Speaker 2: we know what we need to do. We just have
Speaker 2: to act and move beyond what I call climate.
Speaker 4: Delayism climate delays, and I've never heard of I mean,
Speaker 4: that's a great term for it. So, yes, a little
Speaker 4: urgency is needed because we know the cause and the
Speaker 4: effects are already underway. What about these weather system where
Speaker 4: we've got droughts in some areas, we've got flooding in others.
Speaker 4: We know that glaciers not doing so well. Where is
Speaker 4: the water going and what is moving it around?
Speaker 2: Well, water is conserved on the planet. The amount of
Speaker 2: water in the Earth's system is a finite amount, and
Speaker 2: we live on a very small percentage of the fresh
Speaker 2: water that's available to us. And you know, we all
Speaker 2: learned about the water cycle somewhere along the way, But
Speaker 2: most of the water is in the ocean, or it's
Speaker 2: locked away, it frozen in the ice caps, or in
Speaker 2: so forth, glaciers and so forth. So we live on
Speaker 2: a very small percentage of water that's evaporating and condensing
Speaker 2: the form rainfall and falling back into our reservoirs and
Speaker 2: rivers and streams, or snowpack that melt.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I look this up because I needed numbers,
Speaker 4: and apparently there are three hundred and twenty six quintillion
Speaker 4: gallons of water on Earth. What does that mean to you? Nothing,
Speaker 4: I get it. It means it's three hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: six million cubic miles of water on Earth, and ninety
Speaker 4: nine point seven percent of that is in the oceans.
Speaker 4: It's in the soil, it's all wrapped up busy in
Speaker 4: the ice caps for now at least, and it's also
Speaker 4: in the atmosphere. So that just leaves a slim little
Speaker 4: point three percent of water that's usable by our weird
Speaker 4: little species of human and we definitely need water to exist.
Speaker 4: So if you aren't me, and you're dehydrated and you're
Speaker 4: filled with tiketos and gingerbread cookies and you're sitting there thirsty,
Speaker 4: but you're refusing to hydrate yourself, please drink some water
Speaker 4: and say thank you to the water. Say I would
Speaker 4: literally die without you water, You would die so fast.
Speaker 2: So one of the things we've always known about climate
Speaker 2: change is that places that will are dry will probably
Speaker 2: become drier, and places that are wetter will become wetter.
Speaker 2: And so that's how you maintain conservation or balance, because
Speaker 2: that wet place is becoming wetter while the dryer places
Speaker 2: on average are becoming drier. But what is really of
Speaker 2: more concerned to us as climate scientists is not necessarily
Speaker 2: the amount that falls on an annualized basis or the amount,
Speaker 2: it's the rate of change. So what I mean by
Speaker 2: that is here in Atlanta, where I am. The rainstorms
Speaker 2: now there's just greater intensity in the rain. So when
Speaker 2: it rains really hard, it's much harder than it would
Speaker 2: have been on average in nineteen sixty or nineteen seventy.
Speaker 4: It pours so because of.
Speaker 2: These higher intensity rain rates, it overwhelms the engineered system,
Speaker 2: and that's why we see so much flooding on roadways
Speaker 2: and then cities and so forth. With Hurricane Ida last year,
Speaker 2: it made landfall down in the New Orleans, Louisiana area
Speaker 2: a little bit south of there, and then it moved
Speaker 2: into New York and caused tremendous flooding, flooded the subways
Speaker 2: and so forth, because the engineered system that we currently
Speaker 2: live in was designed for the rainstorms of nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: not twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: So if you're good at some city and you have
Speaker 4: been looking for a calling in life, the urban planning
Speaker 4: field of climate change mitigation, it's a real thing. And
Speaker 4: according to one article I just read, urban designer Elizabeth
Speaker 4: Plater Zyberg cited things like more walkable communities that could
Speaker 4: lower carbon emissions, smaller and attached housing structures, and also
Speaker 4: architecture that requires less of a strain on your HVAC system,
Speaker 4: also tree planting. Those are a few ways to go
Speaker 4: in urban planning for the future. But let's look back
Speaker 4: in time for a second. Was your grandfathers walk to
Speaker 4: school uphill both ways in the snow worse than your
Speaker 4: current situation?
Speaker 2: You know, it's counterintuitive to people, but I could actually
Speaker 2: make an argument that the snowstorms and blizzards are worse
Speaker 2: because of climate warming. See that's counterintuitive people, because I
Speaker 2: just said warming and snow is cold. But we know
Speaker 2: that the hurricanes, rainstorms, snowstorms, they all sort of get
Speaker 2: started from water vapor, the gaseoest phase of water in
Speaker 2: our atmosphere. And there's a basic physics principle called the
Speaker 2: Clasius Clapperon equation. Let's break that down for all the
Speaker 2: listeners out. There's a really fancy sounding term Clasius Clapperon,
Speaker 2: but all it really means is as our atmosphere warms,
Speaker 2: there's more water vapor available to it. So as we
Speaker 2: have a net warmer atmosphere, there's more water vapor available
Speaker 2: to it, which means there's more water vapor available to snowstorms, hurricanes,
Speaker 2: and even rain storms.
Speaker 4: So that's huge. A warmer planet means more water in
Speaker 4: the atmosphere, but how much how much water are we talking?
Speaker 4: So per degree fahrenheit about a four percent increase in
Speaker 4: water vapor or that's seven percent for all the places
Speaker 4: that are not the US and use celsius. So let's
Speaker 4: take the northeast United States. Though about a century ago
Speaker 4: the winter's averaged twenty two degrees fahrenheit, but they have
Speaker 4: risen four degrees to twenty six degrees fahrenheit. Some years
Speaker 4: are top and thirty degrees fahrenheit, which would be a
Speaker 4: thirty two percent said increase in water vapor while still
Speaker 4: being below the freezing temperature of thirty two degrees. So
Speaker 4: if your weird uncle is hitting the vape pen and
Speaker 4: declares global warming to be horseshit because his picnic table
Speaker 4: is under five feet of powder, just feel free to
Speaker 4: kindly educate him. Just get some numbers up in there.
Speaker 4: Any other flim flam to address? What about red sky
Speaker 4: at night, sailor's delight? Any truth in that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are certainly these little sort of sayings. They
Speaker 2: have some truth in that. They tend to be related
Speaker 2: to sort of cloud systems that are moving in as
Speaker 2: it sort of interacts with the sun. As the sun
Speaker 2: is setting, you get sort of longer pathways of that
Speaker 2: light through and there's red, but that can change depending
Speaker 2: on the types of clouds that are in the sky,
Speaker 2: and so that tends to indicate certain types of weather
Speaker 2: systems and are on the horizon and so forth. So anecdotally,
Speaker 2: there are some truths. Now, what are not true is
Speaker 2: that rodents like groundhogs or almanacs can predict the weather.
Speaker 2: So I often get that question. I'll have someone that says, well,
Speaker 2: I don't believe all this climate science stuff, but hey,
Speaker 2: what do you think of the groundhog forecast there? I
Speaker 2: think it's erodent, That's what I think. And so you know,
Speaker 2: we have to kind of you know, there are these
Speaker 2: anecdotal things that people have grown up on and they
Speaker 2: just believe that they're true. Like here in the South,
Speaker 2: people will ask me all the time, so is that
Speaker 2: heat lightning? Is heat lightning a thing? And I say, no,
Speaker 2: it's not. But people have grown up hearing about heat
Speaker 2: lightning all of their life. It's like the skylights up
Speaker 2: with lightning, but you don't hear any thunder, and that's
Speaker 2: just because the storm is too far away to hear
Speaker 2: the thunder, but people think it's the heat of the
Speaker 2: day causing the light the sky to light up.
Speaker 4: So for more, so much more on lightning and clouds.
Speaker 4: We have whole ass episodes folmonology and nephology episodes. I
Speaker 4: will link them in the show notes. You will be
Speaker 4: swimming in stormfacts and not smart question. But when it
Speaker 4: comes to cyclones and tornadoes and hurricanes, why so twisty?
Speaker 4: Why do things go in big circles?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like a lot of things in weather, dude,
Speaker 2: that don't they like tornadoes and low pressure systems and hurricanes. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, it really gets into a very complex dynamics
Speaker 2: lesson that we probably would lose half your listening audience
Speaker 2: from if we really go down too deep in that road.
Speaker 2: But it's really an interplay between some fancy things called
Speaker 2: pressure gradient forces and Coriolis force because remember we're on
Speaker 2: a rotating planet. We are not on a stagnant planet.
Speaker 2: We are on a rotating planet with this fluid the
Speaker 2: atmosphere flowing around. And so if you think about a river,
Speaker 2: that's a fluid and that river flows in a certain way,
Speaker 2: But now think about if you put that river on
Speaker 2: a rotating platform. Within a rotating platform, you're going to
Speaker 2: get all kinds of eddies and whirls and so forth,
Speaker 2: and so these sort of rotating systems and are really
Speaker 2: very much related to the complexity of being having a
Speaker 2: fluid on a rotating earth that also is differentially heated.
Speaker 2: It's colder the poles and warmer at the equator, and
Speaker 2: so because of that you get some really interesting dynamics.
Speaker 4: If you're wondering what a pressure gradient force is all about,
Speaker 4: let's tell you. Let's back up a second. Okay, So
Speaker 4: high pressure areas are going to naturally flow into low
Speaker 4: pressure areas, and the pressure gradient force is the difference
Speaker 4: in pressure between the two areas, and the greater the difference,
Speaker 4: the faster the air is going to rush from the
Speaker 4: high pressure into the low and boom, you get wind,
Speaker 4: you get gentle breezes, you get gale forces. It's all
Speaker 4: fluid dynamics spinning around on a spinning rock, and the
Speaker 4: Coriolis effect is all about which way that spin seems
Speaker 4: to deflect a flow. In the northern hemisphere, low pressure
Speaker 4: weather systems circle counterclockwise or to the right, but below
Speaker 4: the equator they take a clockwise or a left turn,
Speaker 4: and yes, this is affecting giant storms and cyclones, but
Speaker 4: also how the water drains out of your bathtub hemisphere
Speaker 4: to the left, to the left, northern right, and near
Speaker 4: the equator, your bathtub spin will be much less twisty.
Speaker 4: Isn't that weird? And really basic terms, but things like
Speaker 4: low pressure system, high pressure system, cold front, what exactly
Speaker 4: do those mean? For people who watch the weather or
Speaker 4: read about it and say, I kind of don't get it.
Speaker 2: Fronts are sort of boundaries of air masses, and so
Speaker 2: cold fronts tend to be frontal systems where you have
Speaker 2: a cold, dense air mass sort of moving in to
Speaker 2: lift and replace warmer air, because warmer air tends to
Speaker 2: be less dense, and so it rises, and so you
Speaker 2: get really violent storms oftentimes at cold fronts. Low pressure
Speaker 2: is just what it says. It's the lower atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 2: whereas higher pressure as higher atmospheric pressure. And you know,
Speaker 2: lower pressure tends to be associated with more stormy, cloudy
Speaker 2: type weather because the air rises associated with low pressure,
Speaker 2: whereas in high pressure, air tends to sink. When air sinks,
Speaker 2: it compresses and warms, and so that's why typically when
Speaker 2: you see high pressure, you're gonna be dealing with really clear,
Speaker 2: perhaps dry, even drought like weather that could call it
Speaker 2: lead to things like wildfires and so forth.
Speaker 4: So fronts are big patches of air, and cold patches
Speaker 4: are more dense, and they lift the warmer, less dense
Speaker 4: air up, and that's called a low pressure system, which
Speaker 4: is stormier, while high pressure systems tend to be hotter
Speaker 4: and drier. I have never understood weather before, so this
Speaker 4: is thrilling, you know.
Speaker 2: I like to use this very simple analogy. I used
Speaker 2: to use an analogy of a water bed, but now
Speaker 2: people under like thirty look at me, like, what, it's
Speaker 2: a waterbed? Yes, I was gonna say, your parents probably
Speaker 2: had waterbed. So you push down on the water one
Speaker 2: part of the water bed, it goes down, but another
Speaker 2: part goes up. Well, something that younger listeners may know
Speaker 2: about is the bounce houses, the inflatable bounce house. The
Speaker 2: same concept. You push down on one part, another part
Speaker 2: goes up. We our atmosphere has these sort of low
Speaker 2: pressure troughs and high pressure ridges, and it's sort of
Speaker 2: this undulating sort of fluid and has these areas of
Speaker 2: highs and lows as well.
Speaker 4: That banging noise was Doctor Shepherd's are undulating as a
Speaker 4: visual aid.
Speaker 2: You got it. Really, it's hard for many people to
Speaker 2: envision it. The atmosphere is a three dimensional fluid from
Speaker 2: the surface all the way up to the top of
Speaker 2: the atmosphere and their various wave patterns within it.
Speaker 4: Speaking of visuals, what's your favorite movie about weather?
Speaker 2: We just did a podcast episode on that, so check
Speaker 2: out the Weather Geeks podcast by the Weather Channel. We
Speaker 2: had a myself, Jen Carfagno and Alex Wallace from the
Speaker 2: Weather Channel to on camera meteorologists. We talked about what
Speaker 2: their favorite weather movies are and just what some of
Speaker 2: the Weather Geek's listeners favorite movies are.
Speaker 4: So that's the Weather Geeks podcast episode called Lights, Camera Climate,
Speaker 4: which is linked on my website. So he had an
Speaker 4: answer all teed up for this, bless him.
Speaker 2: So the one that came to mind for me was
Speaker 2: not one that probably many people would even think about.
Speaker 2: It's a movie by Spike Lee called Do the Right Thing.
Speaker 2: The star of the movie, really, even though you might
Speaker 2: not think about it, was the heat, massive heat wave
Speaker 2: that was going on at the time, and it was
Speaker 2: just almost every scene of that movie. The heat was
Speaker 2: playing some role.
Speaker 4: I have today's forecast for you hot.
Speaker 2: A lot of people will say Twister, and I like
Speaker 2: Twister to tornado movie, and one that's really more climate
Speaker 2: focused is The Day After Tomorrow. Dennis Quaid and a
Speaker 2: few other p. J. Gillenholm and others were in That movie.
Speaker 2: Is a movie about sort of the climate going wacky
Speaker 2: here on planet Earth, and it costs a very strange
Speaker 2: weather storm is just gonna get worse. Should we do,
Speaker 2: I will come for you. Do you understand me? A
Speaker 2: really good movie. It was very unrealistic from a scientific standpoint,
Speaker 2: but it was very entertaining.
Speaker 4: Do you get asked to consult on movies?
Speaker 2: I've had a couple of that. Yes. I was involved
Speaker 2: in the kind of a little bit in the most
Speaker 2: recent movie, Don't Look Up, which is a climate movie,
Speaker 2: and so they reached out to me to comment on
Speaker 2: aspects of the movie after the fact. And also one
Speaker 2: of the really thinks nice things I liked about that
Speaker 2: movie they created an online community of people because that
Speaker 2: whole movie Don't Look Up, even though it was about
Speaker 2: a comment approaching and destroying Earth, it was really a
Speaker 2: large metaphor for climate change.
Speaker 4: There's eight one hundred percent chance that we're all on
Speaker 4: to die hate hate.
Speaker 2: Hey, well, the handsome astronomer can go back anytime, but
Speaker 2: the yelling lady not so much. And so they created
Speaker 2: an entire online community with things that people can go
Speaker 2: to do to learn more about climate change and what
Speaker 2: they can do. And I'm one of the science advisors
Speaker 2: for their their website there too.
Speaker 4: This website is don't look up dot count usin dot com.
Speaker 4: I'll link this on my website. But no, the producers
Speaker 4: did not call him and just have him scream into
Speaker 4: the void with frustration. But it was so wonderfully done
Speaker 4: and with that kind of allegory about climate science. But
Speaker 4: I thought one thing it did so well, and all
Speaker 4: the people I talk to who are involved with climate
Speaker 4: science are like, yes, we're upset, and it's upsetting that
Speaker 4: no one will listen.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, I think we're kind of past that,
Speaker 2: though I think more people are listening now. I think
Speaker 2: there are still pockets of people that aren't listening, but
Speaker 2: it's not the majority of people. Although they tend to
Speaker 2: be the loudest. They tend to be the ones that
Speaker 2: are on Twitter the most, and at your Thanksgiving table saying, well,
Speaker 2: I saw on YouTube this as well. Was it a
Speaker 2: peer reviewed, vetted study or was it a YouTube study?
Speaker 2: So you know, we still deal with a little of that,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, I think we're kind of
Speaker 2: over that hump of having to convince most people again
Speaker 2: probably about a nine. There's a study out there called
Speaker 2: the sixth America Study that Yale does every year, and
Speaker 2: they survey the American public and that crowd that we
Speaker 2: call the dismissive crowd that they're coming in at about
Speaker 2: seven or eight percent. Now, the folks that are just dismissive,
Speaker 2: and you're not going to be able to move the
Speaker 2: needle with them no matter what you say. So my
Speaker 2: approach is on Twitter, I don't bother, I don't try
Speaker 2: to engage with them or play Twitter tennis, going back
Speaker 2: and forth.
Speaker 4: So, and that survey, by the way, it measures six
Speaker 4: different responses to climate science, ranging from here are some
Speaker 4: flavors alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive. Now alarmed, thankfully,
Speaker 4: largest group clocking in this past year at thirty three
Speaker 4: percent of those surveyed. They're like, I'm alarmed. This shit's scary. Dismissive.
Speaker 4: On the other end of that spectrum, Whreuch is like, no,
Speaker 4: not real, that's it nine percent. But the smallest group
Speaker 4: of them all is apathetic, with just five percent of
Speaker 4: Americans identifying as disengaged. So I'm going to link this short,
Speaker 4: four question Yale survey on my website. It's called the
Speaker 4: Six Americas Survey aka SASE, which is a fantastic reason
Speaker 4: to take it already in addition to helping climate researchers
Speaker 4: learn stuff. But what about information that you are gathering? Uh?
Speaker 4: What are some things that you wish people knew about? Whether,
Speaker 4: what are facts to have in your pocket that you're like,
Speaker 4: how do more people not know this? Well?
Speaker 2: I wish most people realize knew that we make weather
Speaker 2: predictions based on computer models that solve equations that try
Speaker 2: to predict how that fluid that I've been talking about
Speaker 2: changes in one day or three days or five days.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wish people knew what thirty percent chance
Speaker 2: of rain means, because most people don't. I mean when
Speaker 2: I add ask people, they generally get it wrong. So
Speaker 2: and because of that, they often sort of misinterpret that
Speaker 2: we got the forecast wrong, when in fact they didn't
Speaker 2: know what thirty percent chance of rain meane, which really
Speaker 2: is trying to capture this r notion that there's a
Speaker 2: thirty percent chance with certain confidence who are given area
Speaker 2: of the forecast, And so I wish people understood what
Speaker 2: the hurricane cone really means. We saw that recently with
Speaker 2: Hurricane Ian and Florida, which devastated parts of Florida this
Speaker 2: year in twenty twenty two, and there were people that
Speaker 2: evacuated from one part of the hurricane cone to another
Speaker 2: part of the hurricane cone, when in fact, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: evacuate anywhere in the hurricane cone. But most people interpret
Speaker 2: that cone is meaning, Oh, the storm's going to go
Speaker 2: down the center of the cone, and if it doesn't,
Speaker 2: I'm good. But in fact, what that cone means is
Speaker 2: there's a sixty seven percent chance that the center of
Speaker 2: that storm can be anywhere in that hurricane cone. And
Speaker 2: so you know, there are just one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've learned over the years as a professor at
Speaker 2: the University of Georgia and a scientist at NASA and
Speaker 2: a communicator with the Weather Channel and Forbes. The American
Speaker 2: public generally struggles with probabilities anything related to uncertainty, anything
Speaker 2: that has more than two processes happening at the same time,
Speaker 2: or anything that they can't simplify to their level. Not
Speaker 2: one thing that I've noticed that as a scientist, people
Speaker 2: will tend to sort of simplify things to what they
Speaker 2: to the level of their understanding, and at the expense
Speaker 2: of getting it wrong.
Speaker 4: Sometimes that makes plenty of sense. And there's a reason
Speaker 4: why there are people like you who are very good
Speaker 4: at this, and then there are people like me who
Speaker 4: forget to bring a jacket I go, which is like
Speaker 4: why it's amazing to interview. Can I ask you some
Speaker 4: questions from our listeners?
Speaker 2: Sure, happy to do it. And Son shout out, I
Speaker 2: hear there's a special question coming. Yes, I'm someone that
Speaker 2: maybe had me in class or something. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yes, not even a question. Jessica Ventra says, I'm too
Speaker 4: excited to formulate a question. But doctor Shepherd taught my
Speaker 4: weather and climate class at UGA. He was a fabulous professor.
Speaker 4: I taught high school science for a decade and always
Speaker 4: recommended his class to my students. And Jessica says that
Speaker 4: they still have notes from your class.
Speaker 2: That's so cool. No, it's really and you know it's
Speaker 2: you know, if she taught high school that long, then
Speaker 2: that means she took me probably over a decade ago
Speaker 2: at the University of Georgia. So shout out to Jessica,
Speaker 2: thanks for taking what I bet was intro to weather
Speaker 2: and climbate eleven twelve.
Speaker 4: But before we do, we like to shower a cause
Speaker 4: of the ologists choosing with some monetary thank yous. And
Speaker 4: this week doctor Marshall Shepherd selected the international nonprofit Institute
Speaker 4: for Sustainable Communities, which supports can by creating and implementing
Speaker 4: and scaling equitable climate change mitigation and resilient solutions for
Speaker 4: those most profoundly impacted by the global climate crisis. They
Speaker 4: also ensure solutions emerge from within the community, and Marshall
Speaker 4: is a board member and you can learn all about
Speaker 4: them at sustain dot org. That is linked in the
Speaker 4: show notes and that donation was made possible by sponsors
Speaker 4: of the show.
Speaker 5: When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't
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Speaker 4: Okay, great questions about to rain down on you from
Speaker 4: patrons of the show via patreon dot com slash ologies now.
Speaker 4: This first one was also asked by Patron's Miranda Panda Slayer,
Speaker 4: Derek Allen and Britney Kaufman. We had some great questions
Speaker 4: from a bunch of listeners. Wanted to know sleet, hail
Speaker 4: and gropple. What's the difference? Susan Baxter is a first
Speaker 4: time question jasker and said, could you tell us about grapple?
Speaker 4: What exactly is it?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, gropple. You know in storm in clouds, oftentimes
Speaker 2: precipitation is forming by ice crystals. The rain that falls
Speaker 2: in most places in the United States actually started out
Speaker 2: as a snowflake. It just melts and becomes rain when
Speaker 2: it gets down below the freezing level. But there are
Speaker 2: oftentimes in clouds where these ice crystals they bump into
Speaker 2: some of the liquid water in the clouds and it
Speaker 2: freezes and it becomes this little seedling of ice, and
Speaker 2: we call that gropple. But in thunderstorms, that groppl can
Speaker 2: continue to take trips up and down in that big
Speaker 2: thunderstorm or cumulo nimbus cut cloud, and they can grow
Speaker 2: and take on layers like an onion if you slice
Speaker 2: it and it falls out of the thunderstorm. Is hail.
Speaker 2: Sleet is actually ice crystals. They fall, they may melt,
Speaker 2: then they refreeze as they fall down to the ground,
Speaker 2: and that's what we get as sleep. And then there's
Speaker 2: another one that I'll add to our question, freezing rain.
Speaker 2: Freezing rain. The ice crystal starts out as a snowflake
Speaker 2: in the cloud. It melts when it falls down to
Speaker 2: the ground, but it falls to the ground the temperatures
Speaker 2: below freezing, and then it freezes on surfaces, and that's
Speaker 2: called freezing rain. So the thing that I would sort
Speaker 2: of meet that I would note about this question, hail
Speaker 2: only happens in thunderstorms. So you see bouncing pieces of
Speaker 2: ice falling during the winter, it's probably sleet. Because I
Speaker 2: often hear people say, oh, it's hailing outside, and no
Speaker 2: that's sleet because hail only happens in thunderstorms.
Speaker 4: So yes, sleet is snow that melted and refroze before
Speaker 4: hitting the ground. Hail happens in thunderstorms. Grapple is snow
Speaker 4: coated and ice. The freezing rain turns slick upon hitting
Speaker 4: a surface. There's so much also more about snowfall in
Speaker 4: the snow hydrology episode, which I'm going to link in
Speaker 4: the show notes, and I hope you listen to it
Speaker 4: with a warm mug of something, because my digits are
Speaker 4: frigid just thinking about it. I had no idea. Okay,
Speaker 4: what about humidity? Tyler Nelson Stephanie Komber's want to note.
Speaker 4: Tyler says, is a fall forty degrees actually colder than
Speaker 4: a spring forty degrees because of differences in moisture? And
Speaker 4: Stephanie Coombs wants to know, is there really a difference
Speaker 4: in wet versus dry cold or is it all in
Speaker 4: our heads? Lauren Maska Broda and Christy Kauger also desperately
Speaker 4: needed answers on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know our flip that a little bit
Speaker 2: because you often hear people talk about, oh, I'm going
Speaker 2: to Vegas. It's one hundred and ten degrees, but it's
Speaker 2: a dry heat right here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but you know.
Speaker 2: One hundred and ten degrees is still hot whether it's
Speaker 2: drying up. But I think the point there is that
Speaker 2: one hundred and ten degrees with more humidity would be oppressive.
Speaker 2: And so here in Joy, Georgia, we can get to
Speaker 2: ninety degrees, but our humidity may be quite high such
Speaker 2: that it feels like as one hundred and ten degrees
Speaker 2: because of that extra humidity. So yeah, there is something
Speaker 2: to the fact that humidity does add to the comfort level.
Speaker 2: In terms of temperature, we often use something called the
Speaker 2: heat index to sort of talk about what the temperature
Speaker 2: really feels like when you add into humidity as well.
Speaker 2: But a better metric these days is something called the
Speaker 2: wet bulb globe temperature. Yeah, that's a big fancy. It
Speaker 2: tries to capture the temperature and humidity but also some
Speaker 2: other ways that our body is exchanging heat with the
Speaker 2: surrounding atmosphere. So it's just a better metric to determine
Speaker 2: whether our body's going to be sensitive to heat and humidity.
Speaker 4: And that is called the wet bulb globe temperature, which
Speaker 4: according to weather Dot GOV is a measure of the
Speaker 4: heat stress in direct sunlight, which is just a dirty
Speaker 4: little combination of temperature, humidity, wind speed, and the sun
Speaker 4: angle plus cloud cover. And some wet bulb globe thermometers
Speaker 4: need to be covered in a moistened cloth to get
Speaker 4: good ratings. Also, why does wet bulb globe sound so horny?
Speaker 4: It doesn't help that the weather reporting service acuweather has
Speaker 4: trademarked the term real feel for this measurement meteorology making
Speaker 4: wet bulb globes hotter than expected.
Speaker 2: So yes, some of your listeners may not be familiar
Speaker 2: with the term, but it's going to become more broadly
Speaker 2: used in the future. Now, the other sort of side
Speaker 2: of that is something called wind chill. When it's cold
Speaker 2: and windy, it makes it feel colder to us, so
Speaker 2: you know, you have to factor in that wind to
Speaker 2: determine what it actually feels like to our skin. One
Speaker 2: other thing that might be an interesting tidbit to kind
Speaker 2: of go along with this question. When it's very humid outside,
Speaker 2: in fact, when the atmosphere is almost near saturation, which
Speaker 2: means it can't hold any more water vapor. Oftentimes that's
Speaker 2: when we feel very uncomfortable because our bodies produce sweat perspiration,
Speaker 2: and the function of that perspiration or sweat is to
Speaker 2: evaporate because when it evaporates, it cools the layer of skin.
Speaker 2: But if the atmosphere is saturated, the evaporation of sweat
Speaker 2: doesn't happen because that water vapor from the sweat has
Speaker 2: nowhere to go. The air is full, so it can evaporate,
Speaker 2: so it just stays there, a sticky, sticky sweat on
Speaker 2: your on your body, and it doesn't evaporate. Because when things,
Speaker 2: when evaporation happens, it cools things.
Speaker 4: So when they're forecasting what a wind chill or trying
Speaker 4: to figure out what exactly windchill is, I always picture
Speaker 4: them having like a mannequin with a bunch of sensors
Speaker 4: out in the wind trying to figure out how cold
Speaker 4: the mannekin would be. But with a wind chill, is
Speaker 4: that all just done numerically or how they forecast that's.
Speaker 2: Just I mean, there are laboratory studies, I'm sure, and
Speaker 2: other things that have been sort of conducted on sort
Speaker 2: of bodies and how they respond to different wind chills
Speaker 2: or heat in diseased or wet bulb globe temperatures. But yeah,
Speaker 2: and once that's established, our weather models predict the temperature
Speaker 2: and the winds, and then you can determine the wind
Speaker 2: chill based on your expected wind or end or temperature.
Speaker 4: Ah Okay, see this is I'm learning so much already.
Speaker 4: A ton of people want to know about tornadoes, looking
Speaker 4: at you, Patrons, Francis Hirstpreu Baker, Elijah Kelsey Simpson, Lea Anderson,
Speaker 4: Rebecca Rodarte, Jonathan, Mary Richard, Rebecca and Frey On behalf
Speaker 4: of their second Greater Aldo Fray, one time Kansas dweller,
Speaker 4: Mary Franks, and Sarah Montgomery. First time question asker says
Speaker 4: their understanding is that hurricanes can only rotate in one direction,
Speaker 4: but tornadoes can rotate in either direction. And also like
Speaker 4: what causes a tornado alley? Why do some places get
Speaker 4: tornadoes and some places don't.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, hurricanes in the northern Hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, and
Speaker 2: they're much larger storms than the tornadoes, which are much
Speaker 2: smaller scale storms that tend to all have counterclock rise
Speaker 2: rotation as well. But there may be some that's been
Speaker 2: out in the opposite direction. I would highly recommend and
Speaker 2: it's not because I'm in this series, but I am
Speaker 2: in this series. Netflix just dropped a new series called
Speaker 2: earth Storm, and there's earth Storm Hurricane, earth Storm Tornado.
Speaker 2: I'm in the hurricane episode, but in that earth Storm
Speaker 2: Tornado episode does a really good job of explaining why,
Speaker 2: for example, the United States gets quite a few tornadoes.
Speaker 2: It's because of our juxtaposition, particularly the great planes of
Speaker 2: the cold Canadian land mass, the Rockies to the west,
Speaker 2: and the Gulf of Mexico. Those three geographic features are
Speaker 2: sort of very important in setting up the environment that's
Speaker 2: conducive for the formation of tornadoes.
Speaker 4: It's a tistedst I should ask, though you did mention twister.
Speaker 4: What's the closest you've been to a tornado? Have you
Speaker 4: ever tornido?
Speaker 2: Very close at all? I run away from them, not
Speaker 2: told to them, but there I say that because there
Speaker 2: are certainly we're in this era of storm chasers now,
Speaker 2: because you know, and some storm chasing is very important
Speaker 2: because you want to get data for science and so forth.
Speaker 2: But are there some people that go out there for
Speaker 2: the thrill or to get pictures to sell to the
Speaker 2: media and so forth, And more power to them. But
Speaker 2: I am a person that wants to be as far
Speaker 2: away from a tornado as possible.
Speaker 4: Okay, good. So you have you ever been in peril
Speaker 4: from your work?
Speaker 2: Not directly, I mean I've certainly been in some pretty
Speaker 2: bad hurricane situations, particularly Opal is one that comes to mind.
Speaker 2: Or I don't put myself in That's not the kind
Speaker 2: of researcher work that I do to go and put
Speaker 2: myself in front of a landfalling hurricane or a tornado.
Speaker 4: Could Patrons Mark he Lette and Alia Myers asked if
Speaker 4: he had to storm Chase and I hope they sleep
Speaker 4: better tonight.
Speaker 2: I was. I had a chance to fly. We were
Speaker 2: doing a mission for NASA when I was a scientist
Speaker 2: at NASA, and the planes are going to fly into
Speaker 2: the hurricane to take some data. And I think I
Speaker 2: had an opportunity to do that, but I passed. I'm
Speaker 2: very ill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good, we need you here.
Speaker 2: So but there are certainly people that do it, though.
Speaker 4: I have a theory that they have to put people
Speaker 4: like on CNN have to be out and a windbreaker
Speaker 4: in a storm, because you won't know how bad the
Speaker 4: storm is until you see a windbreaker flapping around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, I think you've got that right. Actually, There
Speaker 2: are a lot of people that criticize reporters, like by
Speaker 2: colleague Jim Cantore at the Weather Channel. Some people like, well,
Speaker 2: why aren't you just go inside or what you know, Look,
Speaker 2: if he's willing to take the risk, it is providing
Speaker 2: a service because I don't think people have a good
Speaker 2: sense of how strong winds are and what a storm
Speaker 2: surge looks like. Mike's side out. My colleague at the
Speaker 2: Weather Channel was reporting recently from Florida during Hurricane Ian,
Speaker 2: and he was in a protected place, but you could
Speaker 2: really get a sense of the storm surge and how
Speaker 2: dangerous it was without that, Without that that journalism, I
Speaker 2: don't think people wouldn't really have a sense of that,
Speaker 2: and they might be inclined to stay and in a
Speaker 2: dangerous situation in the future. But maybe by seeing that,
Speaker 2: maybe it will make them make a better decision down
Speaker 2: the road.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it always helps me to realize, like, oh, I
Speaker 4: know what wind feels like, and I've never felt win
Speaker 4: like that, So that's helpful for me at least.
Speaker 2: But yeah, when I when I watched coverage of like
Speaker 2: out your Way earthquake, I mean, we don't experience a
Speaker 2: really bad earthquake here Georgia. We do have them or
Speaker 2: wildfires in the way that you have them out there,
Speaker 2: you know, but seeing them or experiencing them from the
Speaker 2: lens of the camera gives me an idea that if
Speaker 2: I did ever live in that area, i'd sort of
Speaker 2: have a feel of what to do, and we're not
Speaker 2: what not to do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean nineteen eighty nine World Series anyone, and he.
Speaker 3: Fails to get Dave Parker bad second day.
Speaker 1: So the Oakland A's take take.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you watch The Giants and the A's,
Speaker 4: but we had a giant earthquake in San Francisco as
Speaker 4: the World Series was playing out in the Bay Area,
Speaker 4: and it was live, so a lot of people got
Speaker 4: to see, you know, Candlestick Park shaking, and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: that sucks.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, I've seen I've seen those images.
Speaker 4: A ton of Floridians wrote in of course, I feel
Speaker 4: like people of Florida seither like meteorology and they're like,
Speaker 4: I have questions. But Katie Collins wants to know Floridian here,
Speaker 4: why are hurricanes so hard to track? And also a
Speaker 4: few people Mackenzie King wanted to know is a hurricane
Speaker 4: season maybe going to go longer in the year, so
Speaker 4: some good questions.
Speaker 2: Actually hurricanes aren't that hard to track within about five days.
Speaker 2: They tend to be a little less easy to track
Speaker 2: when they're beyond about five days out in the ten
Speaker 2: day range. Where we've had progress over the years is
Speaker 2: actually our forecast track has been improved steadily over the
Speaker 2: last several decades. We're never going to be perfect. That's
Speaker 2: another thing I wanted to mention, so I'm glad you
Speaker 2: asked this question. There is this expectation by the public
Speaker 2: that we can get it exactly right. We'll never be
Speaker 2: able to do that, whether it's a hurricane track, tornadic storm,
Speaker 2: or a partcipit. That's why we give you the forecast
Speaker 2: as a cone or as a probability, because we can't
Speaker 2: and we won't ever have the ability to give you
Speaker 2: a precise answer to is it going to rain in
Speaker 2: the backyard near my tomato plant next to the dog bowl.
Speaker 2: I will never be able to give you that precision
Speaker 2: of a forecast. The atmosphere doesn't behave that way. It's
Speaker 2: a non linear system that we're trying to predict with equations.
Speaker 2: We will never have that level of accuracy with weather forecasting,
Speaker 2: because we're dealing with a fluid on a rotating planet
Speaker 2: that we're trying to predict with equations. But we've reduced
Speaker 2: the error in track forecasts significantly in the three day,
Speaker 2: four day, two day, one day out, So fifty to
Speaker 2: one hundred nautical miles of error from my panish one's
Speaker 2: actually pretty good. So in other words, we can tell
Speaker 2: you within a fifty to one hundred miles whether hurricane
Speaker 2: is making landfall. That's about as good as the science
Speaker 2: allows us to get right now.
Speaker 4: So the track or location of our hurricane slash typhoon
Speaker 4: slash cyclone is easier to predict than the intensity of
Speaker 4: it and the intense he follows. The Sephir Simpson Hurricane
Speaker 4: Windscale SSHWS from a ready starts at tropical depression, to
Speaker 4: a tropical storm to a category one if it reaches
Speaker 4: seventy four mile an hour sustained winds, all the way
Speaker 4: up to a category five, which has over one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty seven mile per hour wins. But what about
Speaker 4: their names? Why are we calling them names that we
Speaker 4: would name our nieces or nephews. Well, in order to
Speaker 4: not confuse storm systems. During World War Two, military meteorologists
Speaker 4: named hurricanes after their partners and love interests and wives
Speaker 4: and girlfriends, until this wonderful person named Roxy Bolton in
Speaker 4: the seventies, an ardent and accomplished feminist icon and activist,
Speaker 4: suggested maybe they should alternate those with male names. Although
Speaker 4: Roxy initially suggested that the devastating storms should be named
Speaker 4: after senators, but the baby name convention stuck, and Noah
Speaker 4: keeps these pre written lists that rotate every six years
Speaker 4: until there's a hurricane that's so devastating that they just retire.
Speaker 4: It's Jersey for good, like there will never be another
Speaker 4: Hurricane Katrina. And yes, there has been an oft sided
Speaker 4: study that came out in twenty fourteen titled female Hurricanes
Speaker 4: are Deadlier than male hurricanes, and it found that because
Speaker 4: of gender bias, folks do not heed warnings when it
Speaker 4: comes to a hurricane named after a woman as much
Speaker 4: as they do when named after man, although some people
Speaker 4: contested this, saying that the data set included hurricanes from
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty to nineteen seventy eight when they only used
Speaker 4: female names, so some people can test it. What's my point?
Speaker 4: My point is if a hurricane's coming, please don't fuck around,
Speaker 4: thank you. So if you want to win some easy money, though,
Speaker 4: you can bet someone that the first hurricane of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three will be named Arlen. And hope that they
Speaker 4: don't look at the link that I'm posting on my
Speaker 4: website to Noah dot gov that has all the hurricane
Speaker 4: names for the next six years, and hopefully they don't
Speaker 4: listen to that before hurricane season, which starts in June
Speaker 4: and it lasts longer than Thanksgiving leftovers.
Speaker 2: But there is some evidence because the waters stay warmer longer,
Speaker 2: or perhaps get warmer earlier in the season, that the
Speaker 2: hurricane season might start to be extended beyond June first
Speaker 2: and November thirtieth. I remember in two thousand and five
Speaker 2: we had hurricanes or tropical systems in the December. A
Speaker 2: few years ago we had hurricane or tropical storm Alex
Speaker 2: and that was in January. So it's all related to
Speaker 2: when those waters start becoming warm enough to support a hurricane.
Speaker 2: You typically want about an eighty degree fair and heighth
Speaker 2: temperature or so. But because of the climate warming of
Speaker 2: the ocean, we're starting to see warmer oceans that can
Speaker 2: feed these storms.
Speaker 4: A lot of folks spoke to one of the flim
Speaker 4: flams that you were kind of busting earlier. Mazi Lopez, Gens,
Speaker 4: Girl Alvarez, Josephina, Benjamin and Dbao, James Hale's, Olivia French,
Speaker 4: Andrew Ricaid, Rebecca Davis, Justin Dahl, Kat Kessler's husband, and
Speaker 4: Freddie be all wanted to know what does a percent
Speaker 4: chance really mean and how do you quantify the chance
Speaker 4: of precipitation.
Speaker 2: It's related to the data that comes out of our models,
Speaker 2: and so we look at sort of how much confidence
Speaker 2: do we have that a certain amount of rain is
Speaker 2: going to fall at that location within a given area,
Speaker 2: and so it's it's a probabilistic forecast. So I'll give
Speaker 2: you a little anecdotal example. I was up in the
Speaker 2: North Georgia Mountains doing some river tubing with my son
Speaker 2: one day and it started raining, and this woman sort
Speaker 2: of starts complaining about the meteorology. She said there was
Speaker 2: only a twenty percent chance of rain today. See, those
Speaker 2: meteorologiers are always wrong. She didn't know as a meteorologists.
Speaker 2: I was floating right now next to her, So I'm
Speaker 2: thinking to myself, it wasn't a zero percent chance of rain.
Speaker 2: In fact, we were probably in the twenty percent region
Speaker 2: that day, So I mean that forecast wasn't wrong at all, Right,
Speaker 2: twenty percent, there was a twenty There was a zero
Speaker 2: percent chance that that particular area would receive rain. There
Speaker 2: was a twenty percent chance, so it rained likely in
Speaker 2: of just a statistical since the eighty percent of the
Speaker 2: area didn't get rain, but we were in the twenty
Speaker 2: percent that did so well, nothing was wrong with that
Speaker 2: forecast at all.
Speaker 4: So that percentage can mean that twenty percent of the
Speaker 4: area will definitely see rain. But other meteorologists might use
Speaker 4: a slightly different formula to determine the pop or the
Speaker 4: probability of precipitation, which works out to be the confidence
Speaker 4: of rain times the area. So if there is a
Speaker 4: sixty percent confidence that rain will occur over sixty percent
Speaker 4: of a given geography, then the POP for that day
Speaker 4: would be thirty six percent chance of rain. You know what,
Speaker 4: as long as we're getting formulaic and jargony, these next
Speaker 4: ones are for the real weather geeks. One last listener question.
Speaker 4: I'm going to pick one that I feel like you
Speaker 4: will appreciate because we don't know what it means. Cassie
Speaker 4: wants to know how to get the precision of incituo
Speaker 4: measurements with the coverage of remote sensing to improve model accuracy,
Speaker 4: and Trevor Dirty wants to know E NSO is highly predictable.
Speaker 4: How far would you say we are away from being
Speaker 4: able to predict AMO at similar resolution. I don't know
Speaker 4: what any of those mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, in SO it's just the El Nino Southern
Speaker 2: oscillation cycle, and AMO is the Atlantic multi decadal oscillation
Speaker 2: so INSO is the El Nino La Nina phase, and
Speaker 2: so there is some level of some predictability of the
Speaker 2: INSO cycle. Right now, For example, we're still in Ala
Speaker 2: Nina phase, which means the ocean waters in this Equatorial
Speaker 2: Pacific are cooler than normal and that tends to affect
Speaker 2: weather patterns, whereas long warmer than normal Equatorial Pacific is
Speaker 2: the El Nino and so the Climate Prediction Center of
Speaker 2: the European Center, they actually can predict the sort of
Speaker 2: INSO phase, whether we're El Nino and La Nina, not
Speaker 2: as precisely as we can sort of day to day weather,
Speaker 2: but we can have a sense of whether we're going
Speaker 2: to be in a lin Nini or an al Nino pattern,
Speaker 2: and that in turn leads to some understanding of what
Speaker 2: type of weather we'll see in certain parts of the US.
Speaker 4: So al Nino is warmer Pacific ocean waters, and yes,
Speaker 4: La Nina is cooler and per Trevor's question, more predictable.
Speaker 4: So scientists are still figuring out the AMO, which is
Speaker 4: the Atlantic Ocean's pattern of warming and cooling that tends
Speaker 4: to switch about every seventy or so years, perhaps due
Speaker 4: to the regular ocean conveyor belt currents, but scientists think
Speaker 4: it may also be affected lately through climate change. And
Speaker 4: Trevor Derning wanted to know how far away would you
Speaker 4: say we are from being able to predict the AMO
Speaker 4: at similar resolution.
Speaker 2: The AMO is the sort of larger, long varying cycle
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere that has been linked to hurricane activity
Speaker 2: in the Atlantic, for example, And you know whether we're
Speaker 2: in a sort of active phase versus a non active phase.
Speaker 2: I think our predictability of that is that's clear right now.
Speaker 2: I think one question you mentioned was about QG theory
Speaker 2: and something about a skew.
Speaker 4: T chart, So that was Patron Diana Warheight's question. Which read, oh,
Speaker 4: please ask about QT theory and how the skew T
Speaker 4: is the ultimate atmosphere gauge for what is happening in
Speaker 4: the atmosphere at the moment.
Speaker 2: Which is a plot that we use to plot soundings,
Speaker 2: which is when we send weather balloons up, they take
Speaker 2: information about temperature and moisture and wind and we plot
Speaker 2: those on a skew T charts. And quasi geostrophic theory
Speaker 2: or QG theory, which was mentioned, that's just sort of
Speaker 2: one of the sort of governing synoptic dynamic theories in
Speaker 2: the atmospheric sciences. That explains many of the motions. Again,
Speaker 2: it's way too complex to talk about on a podcast,
Speaker 2: So I would recommend the dynamics class in a meteorology
Speaker 2: program to get into the QG theory, because if I
Speaker 2: start talking about it, your head's going to explode and
Speaker 2: your headphones or EarPods are going to fly out of
Speaker 2: your ear.
Speaker 4: Right, Hi, I went to the American Meteorological Society's glossary
Speaker 4: terms and this back in my little basket for us. So,
Speaker 4: a quasi geostrophic theory is a theory of atmospheric dynamics
Speaker 4: that involves the quasi giostrophic approximation and the derivation of
Speaker 4: the quasi geotrophic equations. What's a quasi geotrophic approximation you're
Speaker 4: dying to know. I'll tell you. It's a form of
Speaker 4: the primitive equations in which an approximation to the actual
Speaker 4: winds is selectively used in the momentum and thermodynamic equations. Specifically,
Speaker 4: horizontal winds are replaced by their geostrophic values in the
Speaker 4: horizontal acceleration terms of the momentum equations, and horizontal advection
Speaker 4: in the thermodynamic equation is approximated by geostrophic adviction. It continues,
Speaker 4: but I blacked out trying to read it. So just
Speaker 4: please respect your whether people never comment on their outfits
Speaker 4: on TV. They deserve so much better.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's some good geeky stuff that we certainly talk
Speaker 2: about on weather gigs.
Speaker 4: So yep. Is there an issue with weather balloons because
Speaker 4: of a helium shortage?
Speaker 2: There was, We've had periodically we have had some issues
Speaker 2: with the National Weather Service. Now, I think one thing
Speaker 2: that really helps us out as we can get some
Speaker 2: of the same kind of information from satellites these days
Speaker 2: that we can get from weather balloons and in some ways,
Speaker 2: the satellites are better because we can get coverage and
Speaker 2: more consistently and over many other places. With the weather balloon,
Speaker 2: we only have it where we have it and when
Speaker 2: we launch it, and that's sometimes just twice a day,
Speaker 2: but it's still the satellites don't have the same level
Speaker 2: of resolution. Satellites are much coarser resolution. And what I
Speaker 2: mean by resolution if most of you probably have an iPhone.
Speaker 2: I'm Team Android, I have a Samsum. But on our
Speaker 2: cameras on our phones, a number of megapixels tells us
Speaker 2: how good the photos are on those phones. So the
Speaker 2: more megapixels, the better the picture. So the finer the
Speaker 2: resolution is of the model or the resud of the observation,
Speaker 2: the more fine scale weather we can actually measure. So
Speaker 2: right now you know, when you've got a weather balloon,
Speaker 2: or you've got a temperature measurement from a thermometer or
Speaker 2: a pressure measurement from a barometer where you're sitting alley,
Speaker 2: that's pretty good resolution. A satellite might you only able
Speaker 2: to give you a resolution over the square mile of
Speaker 2: where you're sitting, so it would be a much more
Speaker 2: blurred courser measurement.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to tell you that in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 4: a truck driver named Larry Walters filled forty five weather
Speaker 4: balloons with helium, and then he tied them to a
Speaker 4: lawn chair and flew sixteen thousand feet over Long Beach
Speaker 4: for about forty five minutes, just cruising in a lawn
Speaker 4: chair covered in balloons. And then he took a pellet gun.
Speaker 4: He thought about this ahead of time, and he shot
Speaker 4: the balloons until he dropped the gun on accident. He
Speaker 4: didn't think about that, but he floated back down to earth.
Speaker 4: He got tangled in some power lines, but he climbed
Speaker 4: down to safety, and then he was on some talk shows.
Speaker 4: But ultimately his life got really sad and he died
Speaker 4: by his own hand. We won't go into it. Also,
Speaker 4: I know you don't care, but I just figured out
Speaker 4: that to lift me off the ground it would take
Speaker 4: five hundred and fifty seven party balloons, which would be
Speaker 4: scary and a waste of helium. So I'm good, just
Speaker 4: sobbing to up last two questions. I always ask, hardest
Speaker 4: thing about meteorology can be annoying, it can be difficult,
Speaker 4: it can be whatever hardest thing about.
Speaker 2: The hardest thing about meteorology is that we're we're it's
Speaker 2: fluid dynamics, but it's accessible to many in the public,
Speaker 2: so they think it's much more so than that it
Speaker 2: really is. The discipline is from a science standpoint, is
Speaker 2: really just fluid dynamics, a bunch of physics and a
Speaker 2: bunch of calculus. But to the public, all they see
Speaker 2: is cole fronts on a map or something. But a
Speaker 2: lot went into getting to that point, and so that's
Speaker 2: the challenge of explaining that complexity to me, is very difficult.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmm. What about your favorite thing? Your favorite thing
Speaker 4: about weather? About meteorology, what's fascinating?
Speaker 2: I can't help. But when there's a storm, you know coming,
Speaker 2: you know, if I'm looking at the radar and I
Speaker 2: see you know, I'm out on my deck or in
Speaker 2: the front yard as long as I can trying to
Speaker 2: see what's going on before I have to get the safety.
Speaker 2: But no, I'm still legitimate, only fascinated by weather. So
Speaker 2: I don't feel like I work what I do. I'm look.
Speaker 2: I was the former president of the American Meteorological Society.
Speaker 2: I work for NASA. I get to do basically big
Speaker 2: science projects. We're living now as a scientist and a
Speaker 2: professor at the University of Georgia. I mean, I'm still
Speaker 2: a kid in the candy store. I don't dread going
Speaker 2: to work.
Speaker 4: This is why I wanted to talk to you. You're
Speaker 4: honestly like the most qualified meteorologist I've ever seen. Like
Speaker 4: your list of awards is bonkers. How celebrated you are,
Speaker 4: and clearly you're very into this and passionate about it,
Speaker 4: because I mean, you're just it shows in the work
Speaker 4: you do and the outreach you do. And I follow
Speaker 4: you on Twitter and you're a joy to follow on Twitter.
Speaker 4: But anything else that you want to shout out, I know,
Speaker 4: we mentioned weather Geeks, we'll mention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I definitely guess Jim. If you like anything
Speaker 2: you hear, We geek out every week with various weather
Speaker 2: and climate and science experts on the Weather Geeks podcast
Speaker 2: by the Weather Channel. Check out my Forbes articles. Follow
Speaker 2: me on Twitter at doctor Shepherd twenty thirteen. I'm on
Speaker 2: int Gram at marsh for FSU. I'm on TikTok at
Speaker 2: doctor Shepherd Knows. So that's just the new for eight
Speaker 2: in the TikTok fairly recently so still kind of feeling
Speaker 2: my way around that format. But yeah, I'm out there.
Speaker 2: I'm not your typical scientists a professor. I really like
Speaker 2: to engage.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for doing this. This is a joy.
Speaker 4: It's been an honor.
Speaker 2: Honestly, thank you so much for having me Alan Wow.
Speaker 4: So there you have it. You can ask brilliant distinguished
Speaker 4: professors sometimes dorky questions because they're just a del yusha
Speaker 4: facts and learning stuff makes the planet healthier for all
Speaker 4: of us. So there are links to doctor Marshall Shepherd's
Speaker 4: social media and website, and to sustain dot org and
Speaker 4: so many things that we discussed up at my website
Speaker 4: at aliwar dot com, slash ologies slash meteorology that's linked
Speaker 4: in the show notes. We're at ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 4: I'm at ali Ward with one L on both. I'm
Speaker 4: at ali Underscore ologies on TikTok say Hi. Smologies episodes
Speaker 4: are right in our feed and they're safe for all ages.
Speaker 4: You can find them at aliwar dot com slash smologies.
Speaker 4: Thank you Mercedes Maitland, Jarreed Sleeper, and Siegredriguez Thomas for
Speaker 4: editing those ologies. Merch is available ologiesmirch dot com. Thank you,
Speaker 4: Susan Hale for managing that plus doing so much more.
Speaker 4: Thank you Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling. Emily White
Speaker 4: of the Wordery makes our professional transcripts and Caleb Patten
Speaker 4: bleeps them. Those are up for free at aliward dot com.
Speaker 4: Slash Ologies Dash Extras. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies podcast
Speaker 4: Facebook group with the sist from Bunnie Dutch and Shannon
Speaker 4: Feltis Kelly ar Dwyers days on top of our website
Speaker 4: and can design one for you. Nick Thorburn made the
Speaker 4: theme music and lead editor for this episode was the
Speaker 4: wonderful Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions, which is linked
Speaker 4: in the show notes at maitland audio dot com. Huge
Speaker 4: thanks to her for the tremendous job she's doing and
Speaker 4: giving mister Jared Sleeper some time to explore his other passions.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited for him for that. If you stick
Speaker 4: around to the end of the show, you know I
Speaker 4: tell you a secret, and this week's secret is that
Speaker 4: I watched Gieramo del Toro's Pinocchio on Netflix and the
Speaker 4: entire time I was watching it, they haven't Jiminy Cricket
Speaker 4: character and he's got kind of a rotund little belly,
Speaker 4: and I just kept thinking, Man, I wonder if he's
Speaker 4: got a horse hair worm in there, because if you've
Speaker 4: ever seen a horse hair worm crawl out of a
Speaker 4: cricket or a praying mantis's butt, wow, it puts like
Speaker 4: pimple videos to shame. Just google it. They put its
Speaker 4: little butt in water and then the horse hair worm
Speaker 4: is like, I'm out of here, and it is like
Speaker 4: a mile of worm. But no, Pinocchio didn't touch on
Speaker 4: horse hair worms. I wish it did. It did make
Speaker 4: me cry a lot. I cried so much. Also, Girmo
Speaker 4: Delt horror at one point on Twitter said he would
Speaker 4: appear on Ologies on an episode about creatures and monsters.
Speaker 4: So he's been a little busy since he tweeted that
Speaker 4: two years ago. But don't think that it's not on
Speaker 4: my wish list. All right, this is not a bout
Speaker 4: me go dance around in the rain. It's great, okay,
Speaker 4: bye bye. The weather outside is weather.
Speaker 5: When it comes to a great deal, Virgin Mobile doesn't
Speaker 5: play around, introducing a new simplan price locked at fifteen
Speaker 5: euro month for life, with unlimited data, calls and text
Speaker 5: and ninety nine percent coverage switch today at Virginmedia dot
Speaker 5: Ie Virgin Media It's playtime.
Speaker 3: TCNC supply fifteen euro per month locked in, while a
Speaker 3: Virgin Mobile customer twelve month contract include unlimited data, standard
Speaker 3: calls and text. All Irish networks offer ends Februar eighteenth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six. See Virgin Media dot e