Climate and weather scientists in the U.S. don’t talk to each other

As a climate scientist, I have worked and interacted with many weather scientists in the past 20 years or so. I am also currently in a task force team to advance subseasonal (2~4 weeks) forecasts of severe weather activity in the U.S. I have learned so much from weather scientists about how longer-term climate processes interact with shorter-term weather to produce extreme weather events such as tornadoes and severe thunderstorms. However, I must say that some of those weather scientists are quite ignorant about the role of climate in extreme weather. That is really okay because we can always learn from each other. But, I know several weather scientists that I can only describe as climate deniers. They view longer-term climate processes, such as El Nino-Southern Oscillation, and Madden-Julian Oscillation, and their impacts on extreme weather through teleconnections, as useless or irrelevant to extreme weather. Such an extreme view is not a simple matter because it also affects publications, research proposals, and funding decisions. In my opinion, weather scientists need to acknowledge that the lead time for weather forecasts is limited to several days. For week 2 and beyond (i.e., subseasonal-to-seasonal), longer-term climate processes are the key to achieving predictability if there is any, and the forecasts must be probabilistic. At the same time, climate scientists also need to acknowledge that climate forecasts cannot predict exactly when, where, and how strongly extreme weather may occur. So, climate and weather scientists need to work together closely if we want to achieve anything on subseasonal weather-climate forecasts. The collaboration should start based on mutual respect.

In a recent article published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, two eminent atmospheric scientists, David A. Randall, and Kerry Emanuel, discuss this deep-rooted problem and propose several practical solutions to move forward in the fields of education, government lab structure, and funding.

Image Credit: https://iviis.com/blog/business-growth-throttled-by-systems-that-dont-talk-to-each-other/

Randall, D. A., and K. Emanuel, 2024: The Weather–Climate Schism. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 105, E300–E305, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0124.1.