Tuesday’s post made a case for what might be called “ensemble” approaches to policy formulation. The idea is borrowed from ensemble weather forecasts. Comparing independent numerical weather predictions (NWP) both provides opportunity to improve accuracy (the “consensus”of the various model … Continue reading →

George Leopold’s guest post on this topic builds on a paper by Whiteman, Hope and Wadhams, published online yesterday. Their original Nature article is worth reading in its entirety. [It’s already come in for a lot of criticism, from Jason … Continue reading →

Another guest post from George Leopold: An increasingly likely “methane pulse” that would result from the warming of Arctic permafrost will have dire economic consequences as grave as the climatic impact. So warn a trio of European researchers specializing in … Continue reading →

This graphic, from Mike Smith’s blog, may look like a jumble to you. But to meteorologists, it’s a thing of beauty. It’s a so-called spaghetti chart or diagram (wonder where they got that name?) made by juxtaposing different numerical forecasts… … Continue reading →

One appealing and substantively important feature of the annual Hazards Research and Applications Workshops is the co-mingling of researchers and practitioners. That co-mingling leads to what social scientists in the crowd like to call co-production of knowledge. The three days’ … Continue reading →

The stream of consciousness flowing through Monday’s sessions… (Don’t you wish you’d said it?) From John Plodinec, in an early plenary:  Resilience is not a display of weakness, but an exertion of strength. Resilience is knowing what your strengths are, … Continue reading →

Our nation owes much of its thinking on natural hazards and their risk management to a handful of hazards research centers sprinkled across the United States. One of the oldest and arguably the most influential of these is the Natural … Continue reading →

“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul” – George Bernard Shaw In our small corner of world affairs, H.R. 2413, “a Bill to prioritize and redirect NOAA resources to a focused … Continue reading →

Back on June 26, I posted that on Sunday, July 7th I’d be delivering the morning message at my home church, speaking on faith and science. Several of you were kind enough to say you’d show up… and you did! … Continue reading →