AMS CCS Telephone conference call November 20, 2009
In attendance: Paul Llanso, Ed O’Lenic, John Dutton, Kelly Redmond, Caitlin Simpson, Chuck Hakkarinen, Holly Hartmann
Paul - describes the webinar with Diffenbaugh and Luber on Climate
Services for Health. This was a well-attended webinar. It was fairly
technically-oriented, as opposed to service-oriented.
Holly - I listened to it afterward and was impressed. Made me think
about how we tie things together.
Ed -
Chuck - I liked the material that AMS put up on their web site to allow
folks to listen to the webinar, or download it. Also, they provide the
ppt. This is great.
JAD - we should sent that url to participants.
Chuck - We always feature a "what's new" section on the front page to
help folks get to deeply imbedded sites.
Ed - we are the only committee using webex this way.
Kelly - both presentations were great. Very much in the spirit of what
our committee is supposed to do.
Holly - Its very helpful to the community to do these to tie things
together.
Paul - Action plans for municipalities was one of the issues. This was
very helpful.
Larry Kalkstein has installed such a system for Philadelphia.
Chuck - Speakers and attendees need to know more about who the audience
is. We should ask attendees to introduce themselves through the chat
window.
Paul - Brian Mardirosian produced a document with this kind before the
meeting.
Ed - could we do this for larger numbers of attendees?
Paul - The broadcast capability would allow for this.
Holly - the questions and discussion were very helpful.
Paul - the medical community offers credit for some webinars.
Chuck - ditto
Holly - could AMS offer credit.
Kelly - Health has a potentially huge following. Its 16% of the
economy. We might not get such interest for other topics.
Holly - a health focus is a good place to test engagement with the
community.
Kelly - there are advanced and not so advanced people out there.
Paul - this webinar was broad in scope. To do more specific topics
might make them more technical.
Holly - Working with local chapters may be a good way to focus on issues
and engage.
Paul - Our local chapter meeting here last week provoked an interest in
a field trip to another location and engage with another local chapter.
I plan to use these ppts at local presentations in Asheville.
Holly - We need to find a way to use the webinar content to attract
interest in other communities.
Ed -
JAD - Apple University is a way to get content from many different
sources. A series of lectures on different topics might be a good way
to do this.
Chuck - It would be good to develop a plan to make our webinars known to
others. Maybe a poster in the booth area.
Ed - I plan to take a poster to the AMS annual meeting on our webinars.
JAD - AMS has a good presence in the poster hall. You could play the
webinar and allow folks to download it.
Chuck - Those giving talks at AMS can plug on the webinars. We could
invite the community to attend our meeting.
Holly - We can also put an article in the daily BAMS paper at the meeting.
Ed - what should we do next?
Chuck - I have suggested two other topics: 1) transportation sector
(winter), 2) Agriculture sector (spring).
JAD - Energy industry is another good topic. Policy and regulatory
impact may be bigger than climate on them.
Holly - How does climate services support policy?
Chuck - Our webinars have emphasized US. A topic on how to interface US
climate services with those in Europe.
Holly - we can go across sectors and topics. Its important to tie
discussions together.
Kelly - its not necessarily the same audience for each webinar.
Ed - We are in the process of discovering what the common threads are.
JAD - Apple University might be a good place for this.
Holly - in Atlanta, we could connect our webinar with CDC and local
chapter there.
Ed - marketing the webinar content might be a good thing to do.
Chuck - Our committee carrying the AMS flag. We have been walking point.
Ed - this is a good topic for a BAMS article.
Kelly - It has not been particularly painful.
Chuck - There has been good success in the technical aspects of the
webinar. You should put the ppt from the other webinars on the website,
too.
Paul - we have asked Brian to start putting together a library.
Holly - How do we capture content that is directly related to the charge
of our committee. The webinars provide a way to hear things the
community is interested in.
Caitlin - Maybe we should think of categories of issues:
Accessibility, Comprehension, govt-private conflict, regional vs
country-wide, Health, water, U.S., International,
Caitlin - maybe the next webinar could be on transportation. Impacts
report for the U.S., regional.
Kelly - I just participated in a review of and FHA study on effects of
climate change on surface transportation. These might we worth
contacting.
Chuck - NAS did a recent study on this, too.
Paul - Maybe we could ask the presenters to distill the implications of
these documents for climate services.
Kelly - If we found someone willing to do that, and found someone
working the the sector. Two speakers is better.
JAD - there is an FHA specialist on the effects of weather on travel.
There is another issue - on the NOAA climate services issue - they are
getting too close to solving the individual users problems. NOAA simply
can't do this. We need to think about how services are going to be
converted into user-specific value-added information.
Kelly - thats a really good idea. Its fundamental.
JAD - coastal community keeps asking NOAA to solve their problems.
Kelly - I am very nervous about making those decisions.
JAD - NWS was doing very specific things a while ago, and stopped that,
and are doing a better job.
Kelly - NOAA is not the only player. Others in govt have climate
information and don't want to be left out. NGO, private sector, other
govt, etc...
Holly - NOAA still has responsibilities in coastal regions. They are
users, too. So, I understand why they might want to do the entire gamut.
Chuck - We need to find out what resources AMS is providing to CCS $$$.
Ed - I will check into that.