A Certified Consulting Meteorologist working in the government: Unlikely? Not really!

There is a common misperception that the Certified Consulting Meteorologist program is intended primarily to support those meteorologists who are working in the private sector, perhaps particularly in the areas of environmental quality or forensic meteorology. However, this is not true. With the growing awareness of the role meteorologists play in all areas of decision support the fourfold purposes of certification as stated by the Society, namely:

1) To foster the establishment and maintenance of a high level of professional competency and mature and ethical counsel in the field of consulting meteorology;

2) To provide a basis on which a client seeking assistance on problems of a meteorological nature may be confident of mature, competent, and ethical professional counsel;

3) To provide incentive for the continued professional growth of the meteorologist after completion of his or her academic training; and

4) To enhance the prestige, authority, success, and emoluments of consulting meteorology specifically, and of professional meteorology generally, by promoting such a consistently high order of professional activity that unqualified practitioners will either labor to achieve this recognition or retire from the field.

are as applicable to government meteorologists as they are to those working in other areas of the profession.

This presentation will describe some of the various ways a government meteorologist communicates weather and climate information, both within his agency and also to partner agencies at the federal, state and local level. Examples will be drawn from the author's personal experience working in both the USDA Forest Service and the National Weather Service.