Weather and Climate Leaders National Teleconference
Aug 20, 2008 - by Staff
Press Teleconference
Listen to MP3 of National Teleconference
BOULDER—Representatives from leading science organizations will take part in a national media teleconference at 12:00 noon Eastern Time today to urge the next presidential administration and Congress to better protect the nation from the impacts of severe weather and climate change. The eight science organizations are releasing a document, which will be provided to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama, that outlines specific steps to strengthen science and help national and local decision makers.
The full transition document, "Advice to the New Administration and Congress: Actions to Make Our Nation Resilient to Severe Weather and Climate Change," can be found here.
Top officials with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the American Meteorological Society, and the Weather Coalition will take part in the teleconference. The other five organizations that wrote the document are the American Geophysical Union, the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and the Alliance for Earth Observations. Collectively they represent thousands of scientists, technology specialists, public policy analysts, and other experts.
More than a quarter of the U.S. gross national product, or over $2 trillion, is sensitive to weather and climate events, according to the report. Climate change has the potential to lead to more extreme events.
Panelists
Jack Fellows
UCAR vice president for corporate affairs
Fellows oversees a range of administrative, research, and education activities that support the atmospheric science community. He served from 1984 to 1997 as branch chief in the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he managed budget and policy issues related to NASA, the National Science Foundation, and federal research and development programs. He also helped initiate the U.S. Global Change Research Program. He holds a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Maryland.
Keith Seitter
American Meteorological Society executive director
Seitter manages the daily operations of the nation's leading professional society for the atmospheric and related sciences. He joined the AMS in the early 1990s as assistant to the executive director and served as deputy director from 1999 to 2004. Before that Seitter was on the faculty of the University of Lowell (now the University of Massachusetts at Lowell). He is a fellow of the AMS and of the Royal Meteorological Society and serves on a number of advisory boards for professional organizations in the sciences and scholarly publishing. He holds a Ph.D. in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago.
John Snow
Weather Coalition co-chair and dean of the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma
Snow has chaired the UCAR Board of Trustees and the Board on Oceans and Atmosphere for the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a member of the budget and finance committee for the American Geophysical Union, and a senior editor for the journal Atmospheric Research. Snow holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from Purdue University.