Weather Geeks

Guest: Dr. Jonathan Kahl, Professor at UW-Milwaukee

If you’re a sports fan, you may know the term “Scorigami!” When you have a score combination that has never occurred before, you achieve Scorigami! And this inspired our guest Dr. Jonathan Kahl to create “Weathergami.” Instead of Team A vs Team B, he looks at high temperature vs low temperature at each location. While it sounds like a fun way to organize and visualize temperature data, it can have simple to digest benefits to discussing climate data across the country. Now, let’s geek out about Weathergami with the creator Dr. Jonathan Kahl…

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Guest: Greg Carbin

Over the past half a century, we’ve been experiencing the same thunderstorms, blizzards, and hurricanes. Our changing climate may have altered how these weather phenomena act, and in turn the technology we use to research and forecast these events have changed as well! From a local NWS office to the SPC and the WPC, today’s guest has seen decades of change across these institutions and has made them all greater along the way. We’re talking to Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the WPC, ahead of his well-deserved retirement today on Weather Geeks

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Guest: Dr. Justin Sharpe

We all know the saying “if a tree falls in a forest and there’s nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well in our world, we can say something like “if a forecast is perfect, but it doesn’t get disseminated properly, did it do any good?” There are still leaps and bounds that need to be made in the weather industry to bridge the gap between the research and communication when it comes to severe weather of all shapes and sizes. We have Dr. Justin Sharpe here on the show today to discuss the work being done in the social sciences both in the present and future…

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Guest: Liz Leitman

You are probably familiar with severe thunderstorm and tornado watches. The storm prediction center and its predecessors have been issuing them since the 1950’s to alert people that thunderstorms may develop and bring damaging winds, hail or tornadoes. About a hundred of these are issued every year. Believe it or not, the first convective watch issued by a woman was just last year in 2023. The author of that severe thunderstorm watch was Liz Leitman - and she is here today on Weather Geeks!

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Guest: Dr. Michael Mann

The topic of climate change and the future of our planet is both a controversial as well as at times difficult topic to understand. But if we want to know more about our future, we need to take a look into the history of our planet and our species. In his latest book, Our Fragile Moment, Dr. Michael Mann walks readers through our paleoclimate record and illustrates how it can serve as a roadmap to preserving our fragile moment. What you decide to do from there is entirely up to you.

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Guests: Jessica Arnoldy

Introduction: A lot of us have memories of being carpooled to your Saturday morning Little League game or having PB&J’s at the picnic table after soccer practice with your teammates before seeing them in class the very next day.  Or how about waking up early to tailgate for the afternoon football game?  Sports have such an impact on all of our lives, whether we are actually playing or just enjoying from the stands, and both of those scenarios tend to involve the weather!  How much of an impact can the weather have on some of our beloved outdoor sports?  We have Jessica Arnoldy here to provide some unique insight…

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Roundtable with: Jen Carfagno, Dr. Greg Postel, Heather Zons

Another year around the sun means another year of all sorts of weather, both the beautiful and the horrible. Every single season brought its own flavor of extreme weather, from crippling winter storms to monstrous tornadoes to scalding wildfires and of course tropical storms and hurricanes. Even if these weather events didn’t physically impact you, their scope in the weather world was so large that you couldn’t ignore the conversation. And speaking of conversation, we’re going to close out the year on the Weather Geeks podcast and break down these most notable weather events of 2023!

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Guest: Derek Manzello, Program Coordinator

Picture a coral reef, and you probably have visions of Flounder from The Little Mermaid or Crush from Finding Nemo. Coral reefs should be brimming with life, and are one of Earth’s most diverse ecosystems, providing significant ecological, economic and societal benefits. Unfortunately, they are threatened by climate change, pollution and more. Dr. Derek Manzello - an award winning coral reef ecologist - leads NOAA’s efforts in the Coral Reef Watch Program to understand and predict the trends in warming oceans and our fragile coral reefs.

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Guest: Chris Goode, Climavision Founder

Introduction: You know the saying: if you put good in, you get good out! In the meteorology world, if you put good data in, you’ll get a good forecast out. But what about the areas that don’t have good data to put into the model, more specifically good radar data? Some areas just aren’t adequately covered and lie in what’s called a radar gap or a doppler dead zone. This makes researching and forecasting severe weather in these areas much more difficult. One way to alleviate this issue is to install more hi-res radars which is what a company called Climavision is doing. Joining us today is Chris Goode, the Founder & CEO, to talk about why it’s important to install these radars and what their company hopes to do with the information it collects.

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Guest: Mayra Oyola-Merced, Assistant Professor at UW-Madison

Introduction: Whether it is preparing for hurricane season or getting ready for a severe weather outbreak, you might hear the phrase “weather models.” All kinds of data go into these models, but a new input could be game changing for weather modeling as we head into the future. Satellites. Our next guest is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where her research focuses on satellite and space-borne remote sensing, specifically in the areas of aerosol and cloud radiative effects, severe weather, air quality, and disaster/hazard risk reduction. Welcome Mayra Oyola-Merced to the show…

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