Weather Nerding!

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Originally uploaded by Reid Wolcott

My colleague Reid took this last week, Mt. Ranier putting on a show! I was talking today with a computer science major who was looking for an easy, five credit class next quarter and I suggested ATM S 101: Weather. It's a survey class for non-majors - but he thought it wouldn't be "useful". I've run into this with a lot of computer people - why learn about the atmosphere? What does it have to do with computer science? My answer to him: A ton. Of course there is modeling - from micrometeorology to global climate, we certainly don't do it with pencil and paper. But there's also tangentially related things like designing software for monitoring instruments, data collection and analysis, neural networks and ensemble forecasting, quality control... It's done, for the most part, by atmospheric scientists who have had to self-teach themselves whatever technology and scripting they needed, not the other way around. But that's not to say that someone with a computer science background couldn't do it if they studied some weather. So you can go ahead and put in your time as a code monkey at amazon, microsoft, wherever, while I can pick up entry-level jobs at sonoma technologies, the Nat'l Weather Service, NCAR, various federal and state agencies and environmental consulting firms, and so on... that pay a whole lot more and have many more opportunities for advancement and satisfaction. As it is, I have never seen an atmos grad student who did CS as an undergrad... we all have math, chemistry, physics and atmospheres backgrounds and it's a shame because I think computer nerds could bring a lot to the field. Computer scientists, I'll leave you with this thought: When a new supercomputer comes on line, do you know what they do to make sure it's working and doing all of its calculations right? They run a global climate model. Computers and all kinds of weather forecasting are intimately related, so yes, I promise a weather class will be useful.