Lyndon State College sent a record high twelve students and two faculty members to Seattle, Washington, from January 22 to 27 for the 91st Annual American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting. Also setting a record with five presenting students, Lyndon was well represented in the national conference.
“Our students’ presentations were all very professional,” said Professor Nolan Atkins, who along with Assistant Professor Jay Schafer accompanied scholars to Seattle.
Jordan Sherman and Sullivan Brown presented on “Meeting Client Needs of Medium and Long Range Temperature Forecasting.” Craig Johnson and Mike Michaud presented their work on VORTEX2—the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes. Garret Combs’ presentation was titled “Characteristics and Estimated Warning Success Rates of QLCS and Supercell-Produced Significant Tornadoes in the Southeast United States.”
Students Alison Ciaramitaro, Matt DiPiro, Robert Harris, Sam Couture, Mike Muccilli, and George Krauszer also attended the event.
The theme of this year’s gathering was “Communicating Weather and Climate.” Professor Atkins said that the AMS chose this theme because of ongoing problems with the communication systems difficulties to share their scientific knowledge with the public. “We as meteorologists and scientists have a lot of ideas and knowledge, but conveying that knowledge to the public has been a struggle. We know so much about our impact, especially with global warming, we just need to better share that with the public,” Atkins said.
During the first two days of the annual meeting, students attended conferences that detailed career options in meteorology and science. Other workshops helped them tune-up their resumes and network withcurrent meteorology professionals.
On the final three days of the meeting, students had their choice of seminars to attend including “Atmospheric Chemistry,” “Meteorological Applications of Lightning Data,” and “Aerosol-Cloud-Climate Interactions.”
