Weather Geeks

Guest: Dr. Andrew Schwartz

For several months of the year, the Central Sierra Snow Lab looks like a winter wonderland. Over 60 feet of snow fell this past winter at the lab and our next guest was there to experience it all. Dr. Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist and station manager of the University of California Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, studies snowfall, snowpack, and the impact of climate change on these.

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Guest: Dr. Stephanie Zick, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech

When we think of tornadoes, our minds are immediately drawn to the Southern Plains or the Southeast, right? Well the Midwest has also had their fair share of damaging and deadly tornadoes, not just historically but every single year. A lot of research has been focused on our typical “Tornado Alleys” but sometimes the Midwest gets lost to the wayside. However, researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered multiple different breakthroughs in tornadogenesis all throughout our atmosphere over the Midwestern states. Today on the show, we have Dr. Stephanie Zick to break it all down for us…

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Host Jen Carfagno with Guest Dr. Greg Postel

With a raging El Nino in effect, the Eastern Pacific hurricane season was bound to be above average.  However, the number of storms that have impacted land has been surprising!  From October 9th to October 25th, western Mexico has been hit by FOUR consecutive tropical cyclones.  Three were hurricanes at landfall, and the one we want to focus on today is Hurricane Otis.  First thought to make landfall as either a strong tropical storm or a weak hurricane ended up becoming the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Eastern Pacific in under 24 hours!  How did this happen and what can we as an industry learn about this storm to help improve forecasting and communications in the future…?

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Guest: Dr. Greg Postel & Jen Carfagno, The Weather Channel

Introduction: With a raging El Nino in effect, the Eastern Pacific hurricane season was bound to be above average. However, the number of storms that have impacted land has been surprising! From October 9th to October 25th, western Mexico has been hit by FOUR consecutive tropical cyclones. Three were hurricanes at landfall, and the one we want to focus on today is Hurricane Otis. First thought to make landfall as either a strong tropical storm or a weak hurricane ended up becoming the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Eastern Pacific in under 24 hours! How did this happen and what can we as an industry learn about this storm to help improve forecasting and communications in the future…?

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Guest: Dr. Lonnie Thompson

It’s not just superheroes and first responders that risk their lives to save others, but what about a climatologist? Would you believe that our guest today climbed the summit of multiple mountains for climate research so we could all better understand how our climate has changed over the years? Well it’s true, and it really is an honor to have him on the podcast today! Subject of the upcoming documentary CANARY, Dr. Lonnie Thompson went where no other climate scientist would dare to go in order to find information and observations that changed how we can see centuries in the past.

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Guest: Rei Goffer, Tomorrow.io

Ursa Minor. Canis Major. Orion. These are all star patterns that you can detect in the night sky called constellations! No matter where you live on Earth, there are constellations that will greet you as you look up. That same principle inspired the company Tomorrow.io to create a plan to launch dozens of radar satellites to help increase coverage of life-saving weather observations around the entire globe, in the hopes that they will be able to sample every point on the planet, nearly every hour. Sounds like an immense undertaking doesn’t it? Well we wanted to talk to Tomorrow.io’s co-founder Rei Goffer about this ambitious plan…

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Guest: Don Hartsell

Introduction: In the upcoming months, we have not one, but two solar eclipses that are set to sweep across the continental United States: an annular eclipse on October 14 and a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The eclipse in April will be the second total eclipse to cross the country in the past decade and the last until 2044. It will also serve as the final exclamation point on a month-long research expedition across the country aimed at collecting data on airborne microplastics aboard an airship as it travels from California to Texas. Joining us is one of the leaders of the expedition, Don Hartsell, to discuss the journey and what the group on board hopes to achieve.

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Guest: Dr. Randy Cerveny

When we hear about extreme weather and changing climate, often we hear about the extreme records that are associated with these events: Things like the hottest temperature streak, the heaviest rainfall, and so forth. You may notice when these events are reported, it’s often with the caveat: “if verified”. An often overlooked, but vitally important caveat. So, who are these verifiers and how do they corroborate world record weather? For the World Meteorological Organization, one of those people is Dr. Randy Cerveny and he’s joining us today to discuss how extreme events are verified and why it’s so important to go through a rigorous verification process.

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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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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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