Can we talk about how we talk about the weather?
Last week, days after a bomb cyclone (coupled with a series of atmospheric rivers, some of the Pineapple Express variety) took devastating aim at California, a downtown conference center here was inundated by the forces responsible — not for the pounding rain and wind but for the forecast. Scores of the world’s most authoritative meteorologists and weather scientists gathered to share the latest research at the 103rd meeting of the American Meteorological Society. The subject line of an email to participants on the first day projected optimism — “Daily Forecast: A Flood of Scientific Knowledge.” But there were troubling undercurrents. Scientists are in consensus on the increasing frequency of extreme weather events — the blizzard in Buffalo, flooding in Montecito, Calif., prolonged drought in East Africa — and their worrisome impacts. At the Denver meeting, however, there was another growing worry: how people talk about the weather.