Science on One Hand

A broadcast meteorologist is the TV station scientist, often the one person on staff with training in math, physics, and chemistry. While weather is the focus of daily presentations, the broadcast meteorologist is expected to give context and perspective to any weather, climate, Earth science, astronomical, or even human-made phenomenon, threat, or event, in simple terms. At times, the broadcast meteorologist has to educate the news department before the audience, on science concepts, units of measurement, math conversions, and what is or isn’t rare or unusual. This all follows journalism best practices, and the mission and purpose of the AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist program.

It is often the odd or impactful science and environmental stories and images that generate public curiosity and capture the attention of the audience on television and social media, giving opportunity to the broadcast meteorologist to stand out as an expert scientist. Things we take for granted are many of the same things that people have never learned, understood or noticed, or they have been forgotten from middle school science.

Through multiple examples, Science on One Hand presents five simple ways, tools and lists of resources broadcast meteorologists can utilize to go beyond the routine weather forecast. Two of the tools are already widely used- satellite and radar. Satellite can show much more than clouds, and radar can detect much more than precipitation. Each can confirm what people saw in the sky or experienced, and support an explanation of how it came to be. The Glossary of the AMS is indispensable as a reference for the vocabulary and science of the atmosphere. Other resources covered will include websites, and web tools, for weather, climate and geoscience data and events, along with downloadable images, video, and kml files, as well as subscription links to notifications of timely, useful event data.

NASA WorldView
NASA Hurricanes
Defense Visual Information Distribution Service
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio
NASA Spot the Space Station
NASA Earth Observatory
USGS Earthquakes
Iowa State IEM
RAMMB CIRA
NCEI Radar
NOAA Jetstream
Meteors
Cocorahs Rainfall
Glossary of Meteorology