Weather is like your mood, and climate is like your personality. Those are the words of today’s guest, Dr. Marshall Shepherd (Twitter,  Facebook and Instagram).

Despite the clear differences between these two concepts, there are many topics of confusion that persist. For example, is El Nino, which we discussed a few weeks ago on this podcast, a climate condition or a weather condition? And how can forecasters be confident in their long term climate predictions when it is so hard to predict weather 10 days out?

Dr. Shepherd is just the person to help us understand these concepts. He is the Director of the Atmospheric Sciences program at the University of Georgia. He’s also host of the Weather Channel series Weather Geeks, previously a research meteorologist for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and has had multiple popular TED talks.

Today we talk about climate and weather and how they are predicted. We discuss the computer models used for both, how they differ, how they've improved, and  where they still need improvement.

He also shares some of his research on how urban areas affect and change weather, and several other fascinating topics.

This episode might sound different than a typical Nature’s Archive interview. That’s because we were planning to use this conversation in an upcoming Jumpstart Nature podcast. So, you might hear a few terms and concepts mentioned without explanation - but stick with it, because we end up defining everything later.

Check these past episodes for more information on topics discussed today: episode #80 on oceans and El Nino and episode #62 on snowflake and precipitation genesis

FULL SHOW NOTES

Dr. Shepherd's Publications
Ed Lorenz and Chaos Theory
Example Forecast Discussion available from the National Weather Service
Hurricane Otis
Six America’s Study
TED Talks: 3 kinds of bias that shape your worldview (2018); Slaying the "zombies" of climate science (2013)

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Music: Spellbound by Brian Holtz Music
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist site: https://brianholtzmusic.com

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