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ClimateAi Unveils Breakthrough 1km Resolution Climate Risk Forecasting using Physics-Informed Machine LearningCovered by AP News

Jason Samenow – Decoding the Science: Weather, Climate, and Natural Disasters

Mar 18, 2020

Jason Samenow is the Washington Post’s weather editor, founder of capital weather gang, and a wealth of knowledge for all things weather and climate. We chat with Jason about the inner-workings of weather forecasts, the latest in climate science, and how to accurately communicate on climate change– what we can and can’t say with certainty about the changing world around us.

This week in Agriculture Adapts:

– Scientists have officially discovered the footprint of climate change on our everyday weather

– Most weather-related natural disasters get blamed on climate change. To what extent is that a fair connection to make?

– What makes weather forecasting so hard and how to best communicate forecast uncertainty

– Deconstructing the 2019 floods in the Midwest U.S.: a perfect storm

***

References mentioned in the show

– Capital Weather Gang twitter

– Capital Weather Gang general website

– Capital Weather Gang Facebook

– Jason Samenow’s personal Twitter

– Daily weather now bears the fingerprint of climate change

00:00 / 00:00
TRANSCRIPT

Borna (ClimateAi) 0:03
This is Agriculture Adapts by ClimateAi. Every week we speak with industry leading executives farmers, NACA demyx to get a 360 view of how the agriculture sector is innovating to stay ahead of a changing climate. I’m your host Borna Poursheikhani.

Himanshu (ClimateAi) 0:17
And I am your co host Himanshu Gupta.

Borna (ClimateAi) 0:20
We’re a team of climate scientists and agriculture entrepreneurs trying to make farming more resilient, profitable and equitable as we transition to a new age of agriculture. This podcast is our journey as we explore the hurdles and opportunities that lie ahead for the industry that feed the world. Hello, and welcome. We have another information packed episode here. Joining us today is Jason salmon. Now the Washington Post’s weather editor and the founder of capital weather calm now capital weather gang. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that later. He is past chairman of the DC chapter of the American Meteorological Society and Western society Integrated Studies. Hello, Jason, thanks for joining us. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you. We usually like to start this podcast by sort of just hearing your background and your story. And for you, I guess it’ll be it’s usually how it integrates in our culture. But for you, I think it’ll be more about where your passion for climate and for meteorology came from. And kind of like the journey that you’ve been on up to today.

Jason Samenow 1:15
I became interested in weather when I was pretty young around the age of 10, or 11. When we had back to back major storm snowstorms, which tracked across the Washington region shut down school for seven days. And so I saw the high impact that a weather event can have on a location and my interest in snow storms then evolved into interest in all things weather, including thunderstorms, hurricanes, and eventually when I got into college climate change, as well, I took a lot of classes and climate change as an undergraduate and with the weather today being so impacted by climate change, sort of having that dual focus that I pursued as both an undergraduate and a graduate student in both sort of the science of meteorology and learning to learn more about climate change. That’s been valuable for me from a career standpoint and also kind of helps to describe my career path, so to speak.

Borna (ClimateAi) 2:09
Awesome. And I’m really excited to have you here. We haven’t had someone with like a specific climate background yet, we’ve more been talking about the impacts of climate change and how to adapt. So it’ll be interesting to sort of dig into, you know, what is weather? What is climate? And what are the impacts we’re seeing? And what kind of things can we attribute to to climate change and sort of defining the parameters around that discussion? But first, I think it’d be really interesting to hear a little bit more about capital weather gang. When you guys are, I guess, when you first started it on your own, it was a very unique platform for talking about weather. Can you talk about the platform and talk about what makes it so unique?

Jason Samenow 2:41
What I got out of graduate school and where I focused in atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin, I took a job at the EPA working on climate change science and communication, but I kind of wanted to stay involved in weather forecasting, weather communication, which had been a passion of mine since I was really young. So I started this website called capital weather calm, which was initially a portal to DC weather information and, and at the same time blogs were becoming a very popular platform for communicating information. And we figured weather being such a dynamic and changing topic that a blog would be an excellent platform for communicating weather, especially because it’s an interactive platform. It allows you to make weather two way conversation where your audience can interact with you. And so we launched capital weather calm as a blog shortly after we launched it as the portal and opened it up to comments and really tried to build our audience through grassroots getting other DC area websites to link to us. And we really wanted to make weather discussion with our reader. So there could be this two way communication and so we could provide a service to our readers, but also our readers could provide some value to us by Providing storm reports. And eventually, as time wore on, and we were able to expand our brand onto social media platforms, were able to also open it up to multimedia to photos to videos. And so we were able to get ground truth to the things we were forecasting whether it was a severe thunderstorm, or whether it was snow and wintry precipitation. And so that that two way communication was really sort of pivotal to what we were doing early on. And I think what made us unique, and we were I think we were the one of the first blogs on the internet, to have this sort of two way weather conversation when we launched it in 2004.

Borna (ClimateAi) 4:42
Yeah, and that’s why I really like what you guys are doing is because you guys hone in on the communication component. So well, and when you’re dealing with something that is very uncertain, I think that’s a really important thing to take into consideration. So I would be interested to hear a little bit more about that, like you guys have this two way conversation going. So you guys are known for You know, being able to communicate these uncertainties really well. And I guess it would be interesting to hear like, how do you communicate these uncertainties at the different timescales? So you know, if you’re looking at like three days, or seven days versus two weeks, like what are the main drivers of the uncertainty? And then how do things change as you get closer to the day,

Jason Samenow 5:17
since we started, we, we’ve had two priorities, which has been reader engagement and communication of uncertainty. So from the get go, we included confidence levels in our forecasts, ranging from low to high. And we explained very clearly what we mean by low, medium, and high and categories in between. And so we’ve done that. I think for high impact weather events, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to use a scenario approach where when we’re talking about a forecast, which is many days into the future, we may put together several different scenarios. So we’re five days out, we may have four or five different scenarios as to how an event will unfold and then as we get closer and closer, we will drilling down and we try to narrow it down. So eventually, by maybe three days out, we might have two or three scenarios. And then within 24 to 48 hours, we tried to narrow it down to one. But even when we narrow it down to one, we continue that process of communicating uncertainty, especially with high impact weather events like snow storms, where we produce what we call boom and bust scenarios. So we’ll, we’ll put out a map with our forecast for the most likely snowfall, but we’ll also on that map, in fine print, but which is legible convey what is the likelihood that the snowfall will be less than we’re predicting, that’s the best scenario. And what’s the likelihood that the snowfall will exceed our most likely forecasts, which is a boom scenario. And we’re going to get feedback from that from readers with this sort of was the result of a forecast that we messed up and I think was March 2013, where we were calling for six to 10 inches of snow and we got less than an inch and a lot of variability. Got got a little clip over nothing. And we indicated our confidence in that forecast was just moderate. But even so, we didn’t do as good a job as we could have, indicating the possibility that the storm could end up producing nothing, which is what it did in many areas. So that was a offspring of that experience.

Borna (ClimateAi) 7:21
And just to dig in on that component a little bit further, like from, from a climate weather meteorology standpoint, what makes weather so hard to forecast like, what what kind of things are you looking at when you’re trying to figure out what the weather is going to do at these different timescales? And and where does this uncertainty come from? And just keeping in mind that a lot of our listeners are agriculture folks or people, you know, in the entrepreneurial space and may not be so in tune with with the drivers of weather and climate.

Jason Samenow 7:46
Yeah, so I guess the first thing I should mention is that forecasts have come a very long way. But meteorological sciences are so much more advanced than they were just a few decades ago, as a result of improvements and strides made in computer Modeling and our computer models are really good. I mean, we have multiple computer models that we use that we review when we when we forecast. And so for example, a five day forecast A number of years ago. So what was a three, an accurate three day forecasts A number of years ago, is now equivalent to like a five day forecast today. So we’ve been able to sort of add days out into the future in terms of our level of confidence and accuracy. So as a result of these improvements in computer modeling, we’ve been able to make a lot of strides in forecasting. Now, let me just say that, where we have the most trouble in weather forecasting, is along the edges of storms. It’s not, it’s not sort of in the sweet spot. You know, for certain storms, we know certain areas are gonna get hammered. But then there’s some areas which are right along the line where the heavy precipitation starts and stops. And that’s where you have the biggest likelihood of seeing a forecast error. So along the edge and winter storms, it’s, it tends to be like right around the rain snow line, because just one or two degrees of difference can be the difference between bare ground and heavy snowfall, which is highly disruptive. So, meteorology is really these days, it’s sort of an edge problem, where where there are these boundaries where precipitation starts and stops where precipitation types change. That’s where you have the biggest errors. And sometimes you can’t really know where these edges are way set up until the storm has already begun. Again, the sweet spots, you know, where the heavy precipitation is modeled consistently, day after day after day. We can sometimes forecasts those three, four or five days in advance, but along those edges where the heavy precipitation starts and stops, that’s where we have our biggest problems.

Borna (ClimateAi) 9:58
Yeah, I think if everyone had weather like you guys do Provided be extremely useful. A lot of farmers don’t have that sort of granularity and that sort of like scenario layout that you guys have. And that would be extremely useful. Because right now they’re just getting kind of like these point estimates hour by hour, and making decisions based off and you’re making strategic decisions that if you make the wrong one, it can cost you a fair amount of money. So would be something that would be useful for everyone. And I think you guys are doing really cool stuff there. You guys also do a fair amount of writing on climate change itself. And people hear in the media that there’s an overwhelming body of literature, proving that climate change is exacerbated by humans and by our emissions. And I just wanted to see if you could give us a sense of like, Is there a timeline for how the science of climate change has developed over time like, like, what was the history of proving climate change? And at what point did the scientific community become certain?

Jason Samenow 10:48
Was it the the basic idea that if you add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has a warming effect, I mean, that goes back to the 1800s. There are, there’s a book called The history of global warming, which sort of By Spencer work, which details a lot of that history, in terms of our confidence with respect to the effects that climate change is having on the planet right now? I think that has evolved since the 1980s. Of course, you had Jim Hanson in 1988, who testified before Congress that the greenhouse effect was having an effect on our climate at that time, and he expected it to to become more pronounced and that’s happened. So I think there’s been an evolution really since the 1980s. That this is real that’s happening in its human caused, and I think our confidence in that has only grown over the last three decades. The intergovernmental panel on climate change has put out now five assessment reports in which his confidence in the effects of climate change is having has only grown and the human in our confidence that humans are influencing the climate is only grown now. So And we’ve now reached the point where I think the IPCC has concluded it’s extremely likely, with greater than 95% confidence that most of the warming that we’ve experienced in recent decades is a result of human activities and other assessments from other scientific institutions have concluded the same thing.

Borna (ClimateAi) 12:16
What is the right way to communicate on climate change? Because a lot of people will see a wildfire or see a hurricane and say, Oh, that was that was caused by climate change. But a fair amount of climate scientists that I’ve spoken with have said, very few things are caused by climate change, like climate change can exacerbate the impacts of certain things. So what is the right way to communicate on things like these natural disasters that people are attributing to have been caused by climate change?

Jason Samenow 12:41
Right. So I think it’s important to recognize that we’ve always had extreme weather events, we’ve always had weather disasters, you know, throughout the Earth’s climate history. So there’s natural variability which causes storms causes weather. That’s always been the case. And so the way I like to think about climate change It has an intensifying an effect. So it’s sort of like a steroids. So if you have a heat wave that might have occurred naturally otherwise, climate change intensifies the magnitude of that heat wave and makes it more extreme. So similar argument can be made for precipitation events. Because when the atmosphere is warmer, you speed up evaporation, there’s more water in the atmosphere for heavy storms to draw from. So a heavy rain event, which might have produced maybe nine inches without human caused climate change may therefore, you know, produce 10 1112 inches. So climate change is intensifying. Certain extreme weather events are the ones which we have the most confidence in our heat waves and heavy precipitation. And there is also increasing evidence that climate change is also affecting the intensity of hurricanes as well. And so those are those are sort of the big three and drought is in there as well. If you’re a In a dry pattern, and it’s hotter, evaporation speeds up, you try out the land surface. Your drought is worse as a result, says the same thing about wildfires. And we’ve seen that in Australia this year, they just had their driest year on record. They had their hottest year on record, and they’ve had a terrible wild wildfire season. This winter and climate scientists are fairly confident that climate change has increased the intensity of the wildfires. It’s not to say that the wildfires wouldn’t have occurred if there were no climate change, but their severity is likely has likely increased as a result of climate change.

Borna (ClimateAi) 14:36
Yeah, definitely. We’ll be curious to get your take on, on how people can start to think about the difference between like just normal weather variability and climate change, like At what point can we establish that there is a new norm in a given region? And that, you know, you may see variability across 10 years and then at some point, you’re saying, Okay, these averages have increased to a point where there’s a significant signal coming In this area, how can you decipher What’s what?

Jason Samenow 15:03
Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, there was a study which just came out, I think a few weeks ago, which demonstrated that the signal of climate change is now apparent and everyday weather. And so we’re starting to see the signal emerge from the noise. I mean, I don’t know if we were ever going to reach a point where we can say that climate change is absolutely responsible for 100% of everything we’re seeing outside just because, you know, the atmosphere is driven by, you know, differences and heating across the earth. And that’s always gonna be the case, but you’re just adding energy to the system and you’re intensifying that energy as we increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the system. So, but I think the I think over time, we will be able to make clear distinctions as to how much climate change is affecting our weather. And there’s already this growing area of what we call attribution science. With climate scientists, looking at extreme event, study it and try to quantify how big of an effect climate change had. So they do modeling studies which examine, okay, well, what would this event have looked like if we had not added greenhouse gases to the atmosphere? versus what does this event look like now that we have, and they’re able to, therefore quantify that change as a result of climate change, influenced by humans?

Borna (ClimateAi) 16:29
Very cool. Yeah, the paper you mentioned, and I’ll link that in the in the show notes, was a really cool paper. And I kind of want to dig on to that a little bit further. And he was basically just saying that we can now detect the fingerprint of climate change on everyday weather. So can you talk a little bit more about the implications of that and what that means for the world as well as what that means for climate science and understanding of climate in general?

Jason Samenow 16:51
Yeah, right. So I think if you, you know, think about a planet in which greenhouse gas concentrations have not changed. Your weather is going to be one thing. versus if you add, you know, 40 to 50% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to what would otherwise be there, it has to have an effect. And so basically this study was saying that that signal has now emerged, we can see this each and every day, when we do climate modeling studies, and we compare, you know, what daily weather would look like without climate change versus what it would look like with human caused climate change. So, basically, the effect of climate change is now discernible in our daily weather experience. That’s basically what the study is showing. So, if you think about it, from a practical standpoint, you know, say the forecast for tomorrow is 50 degrees in Washington, DC 150 years ago, the forecast probably would not have been 50 degrees, it might have been 48 or 47. And so this study is basically saying that we can now start to see that affect the climate change, and our scientists are now going to be able to better quantify just how big of an effect climate change is having.

Borna (ClimateAi) 18:08
Yeah. And this was kind of like a paradigm shift in the climate world, right? Because Because, I mean, before there was this notion that climate and weather are two separate entities and climate is like the lungs long term probability. And then whether it’s like what’s actually happened on the day to day, something that I think is, as been particularly detrimental for farmers in terms of whether in the past year was the Midwest floods and was just hoping to dig a little bit further into that you guys do a really good job of kind of disseminating different issues that happen and talking about what caused them and for people who aren’t familiar, the Midwest this past year in 2019, was suffering from heavy precipitation and flooding, they had the slowest rate of planting in the last 40 years, a lot of these corn growers and basically that’s problematic for them because if it’s flooding they’re trying to decide Should I plant or should I not plant and then you start to get your season is shortening towards the end of it and then you start butting up against An early frost and the fall, which could mean they could wipe out your crop and some of that money can be compensated by insurance. But another difficult decision that farmers have is do I not planted do I plant because the insurance companies oftentimes will pay them 50% of the payout if they don’t plan it, because the insurance companies will save money. So it’s a very difficult issue for farmers in terms of like making these strategic decisions. They don’t always have the insights to see how they should be making these decisions. So can you talk a little bit more about what happened and why we had these extreme floods in the Midwest and this past year?

Jason Samenow 19:31
Yeah, so it’s interesting because last spring, we actually had cold weather, cold, snowy weather, usually late in some area. So winter weather sort of extended longer than it does in some years. You know, every every year is different. I mean, with climate change we expect. In general we expect to see a longer growing season as the planet warms and warmer temperatures coming And earlier in the spring and late in winter, but last year was one of those exceptions where we had a lot of snow and cold weather so, but then things suddenly start to change. And so you had a lot of snow on the ground and parts of the Midwest and the northern plains during March and April, and the same time, you also started to see some of these big storms, tracking through that area drawing a lot of moisture northward, and a lot of warmth northward. So you had sort of this background condition of frozen soils, a lot of snow, and then interacting with this huge flux, a heat from the south, and all this moisture from the storms generating heavy rainfall. And as a result, you had sort of a worst case flood scenario where you had all this water trapped in the snow cover over the parts of the upper Midwest in the plains and at the same time and the ground, frozen At the same time you had heavy rain coming in and warm temperatures coming in. So you had all this water, you had just so much water, and it had nowhere to go because the ground was frozen so it couldn’t seep into the soil. It was just running off. And you had as a result, extreme flooding and really river flooding. I mean this water because it had to run off it had to go somewhere. So when industries and rivers which just overwhelmed the agricultural zones, you had entire communities basically inundated with water, you saw entire towns cut off because the rivers had overflowed roads and basically streets have turned into rivers. So it was just a it was just a tremendously bad situation. As a result of, again, the snow and all the water locked in the snowpack, the heavy rain falling on top of that the fact that ground was frozen and all this water had to go through somewhere and it was into the rivers, which should then just overwhelm the landscape and the upper Midwest and the plains.

Borna (ClimateAi) 22:06
When things like this happen Does, does that make it easier for us to predict these sorts of events in the future? Like now? Do we better understand how these different variables tie together to create a devastating climate? Like disaster? Like, are we now able to understand that situation and apply that in the future? Oh, were these different variables are coming back in and we may see these big floods again?

Jason Samenow 22:27
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think obviously, they’re, they’re climatologists, there are planners who study these things closely. And I think even the predictions last year I if I remember correctly, that no one is spring out Look, had predicted a really bad flood season. So I think the antecedent conditions were there that such that scientists and climatologists meteorologists were able to identify that there was a potential for something bad to happen. And interestingly, I think the There’s some potential for this to be another flood bad flood season Looking ahead, but yeah, I think the answer to your question is definitely yes. Because we learn from every event. And obviously last year, we saw sort of what a worst case scenario looks like. I mean, presumably, it’s a worst case scenario. We hope it’s the worst case scenario, but in terms of having several different conditions come together and converge. Last spring was about as bad as it gets.

Borna (ClimateAi) 23:25
Yeah, make sense? would be curious to get your take on how journalism as a whole has changed with respect to climate change, since you started blogging, and since you got into the field of climate and weather,

Jason Samenow 23:37
yeah, maybe things changed a lot. I mean, when I first started covering weather, and climate, not a lot of people were connecting the dots between climate change and extreme weather events. There was some initial there were some initial writings, you know, when we’d have a heat wave that you know, this is the sort of thing We can expect to see more frequently in a warmer world. But there was always this sort of cautionary note that you can’t attribute any single weather event to climate change that. I think. Now we can, because of the attribution science and the advances in computer modeling in our understanding of climate change, we can better connect individual weather events. And the role of climate change. Again, as you smartly pointed out earlier, you can’t say that climate change causes any weather event, but we can start to quantify the the impact that climate change has. And so I think we’ve seen sort of incremental improvements in that ability to connect the dots between weather and climate over the last 10 to 20 years, whereas 10 to 20 years ago, you might hear the connection made every once in a great while and it was very heavily qualified to pretty much with every event now every extreme weather event now we’re trying to get a handle on what The effect of climate change is and we’re getting better and better at understanding that although, of course, there’s still room for improvement and advanced there.

Borna (ClimateAi) 25:08
What about the role of social media? Like, it’s no, it’s no secret that climate change has kind of become a politicized issue. And whenever that is the case, that means that people will take strong stances on something that they may not fully understand. And I would, I would say climate change is something that most people don’t fully understand. They kind of just trust the literature on, which can be said for a lot of things. That’s how you find truth and things. You kind of just trust, the body of science and the and the constantly evolving nature of just education and knowledge as a whole. But how has social media changed the way that people view climate change, and the way the public engages with it?

Jason Samenow 25:47
Yeah. So I mean, I think you’re right that it is a very polarizing issue politically. But you know, those of us who are committed to communicating the science of climate change, we try to keep the politics out. Have it and just sort of mirror what the science scientific community is saying about the client saying about climate change. And I think that’s where the challenge is because I think, you know, public opinion shows that Americans are in general, increasingly accepting the fact that climate change is happening and that it’s human cost. But there still actually a fair number of people that don’t understand the degree of scientific consensus there is on the issue. The fact that, you know, an overwhelming majority, you know, over 97% of the studies, which have been published about climate change, recognizes the fact that it’s human caused. So there’s very little debate in the mainstream scientific community that humans are primarily driving climate change, but the public doesn’t fully grasp that yet, although that level of understanding i think is improving. I think you’re right. There are a lot of nuances that the public doesn’t get about climate change. And so, again, that’s our role as science communicators. To try to explain to people, you know what climate change is and is not responsible for the relative role that plays in our weather, and how it is potentially changing extremes or not overselling, and not overhype being the role that has and sensationalizing it because I think there is a tendency for some to sometimes maybe lose hope, or be in despair if they see the sort of cataclysmic projections which are unsupported, and therefore they don’t think they can do anything about it. Whereas Actually, it’s more of a risk management problem. Obviously, you know, climate change potentially has significant consequences that we need to understand. And there there’s the potential for for bad things to happen. But there’s also I would just say that there are solutions to the problem. And so you don’t want to just report the bad news without giving people hope and help you People understand that there are things we can do to slow this down and to make it more manageable.

Borna (ClimateAi) 28:04
Yeah, I think that’s important to not not be always providing doom and gloom scenarios, but to make it more of an opportunity or to explain to people, you know, what is the reality? And what are the possible steps we can take forward? I think that is really important. As someone who’s been kind of reporting on climate change and studying climate change for a while, I would be curious to get your take on how you deal with it on an emotional level, a lot of our listeners work in the climate space in the clean energy space. And a question that I get a fair amount whenever I speak at like these panels at UC Berkeley or on sustainability in San Francisco, is how do you like it? And this is mostly from younger people who are currently in college that are considering coming into this field, they say, how do you deal with it emotionally on a day to day when you are constantly dealing with a problem that can be very difficult and can oftentimes for people in the industry seem like a treacherous path forward? How do you deal with it emotionally?

Jason Samenow 28:54
It’s interesting because you know, I’ve read so many stories on weather, and so I’ve kept my hands on the pulse of, you know, what’s happening with the weather and how climate change is influencing the weather. And I’ve kind of been really interested in like in the last five to 10 years especially just see just like it’s just becoming more and more apparent and undeniable that, you know, the changes that are happening are pretty profound out there. I mean, just yesterday, we were reporting on how warm it was in January and parts of Europe from basically Scandinavia to to Western Russia, I mean, Moscow for the first time. In January, its average temperature was about freezing. Helsinki had its warmest January on record. It didn’t snow in Helsinki, Copenhagen, or Stockholm, and all the January which is practically unprecedented. So you see this stuff happening and you’re like, wow, and it’s it is sobering. And you know, when you when you’re reporting on it day after day, it does make you worry, but, um, you know, and everyone’s different. In terms of how they sort of digest and process what’s happening, I tend to be an optimistic person and tend to think that, you know, with the sort of suite of solutions that we have to climate change, that we’ll eventually be able to manage the problem. I think, you know, obviously, the sooner we get to work and the more we’re able to do it, the more we’re able to do that, the better, we’re going to be able to reduce the risk of the worst consequences. And it does worry me that, you know, we’ve known about this problem since the 80s. And we have been rather slow as an international community at addressing it in a meaningful way. But I am encouraged by the technology which is becoming available by the solutions by actions which are being taken at the state and local level, that we will be able to manage this problem in the long run. That word adaptive species is what what to me is most concerning is maybe more of the effect on the natural world, you know, ecosystems. Which candidates easily adapt irreversible changes to certain aspects of our physical systems like our ice sheets or glaciers, things that will take centuries if not longer to recover as a result of the of what we’re doing. I mean, that That, to me is tougher. I mean, I think, and I also worry about people in developing countries who don’t have the same resources to adapt and cope, that we do. And so I think, you know, a real priority and an opportunity is to, obviously develop better adaptation and coping strategies for areas which are most vulnerable to climate change. And so, I think that needs to be an area of emphasis. But yeah, I mean, I I tend to be optimistic, but obviously there there are a lot of areas for concern.

Borna (ClimateAi) 31:42
Yeah, I think that’s right. And the first time I was asked this, I was kind of caught off guard. I was like, I don’t know, like, I just, it’s, for me, I just enjoy working on problems that I care about. Like that was the main thing I learned through all my previous jobs was if I’m not working on something that I care about, I can’t give it my all, but the thing that gives me energy is being around people. like yourself, we’re working on these issues and you know, helping communicate and helping solve the problem. And it can be a very exciting thing. It can be a very thrilling thing to be around people who are trying to solve one of the biggest problems of our time. And it’s oftentimes feel like there is a big coming together, even though we’re not doing enough love hearing from people who are doing, you know, a huge chunk of the effort on their own and trying to push things forward out of their own initiative. But yeah, I mean, this has been a hugely helpful, hugely insightful, very enjoyable conversation. Jason, I appreciate it. Is there any way people can support what you’re doing at Capital weather gang or just you on your personal Twitter, whatever it may be?

Jason Samenow 32:38
Sure. Yeah. So you can of course, if you want to follow our content, and I think one of the things I want to clarify is that you know, the capital weather gang, we are the Washington Post weather team. We do place an emphasis on DC weather, but we cover weather all over the world. And so every day, we’re writing national and international weather stories. As I said, yesterday, we wrote about the exception Warm January in Europe. Today we’re writing about, you know, this major storm system tracking across the, the lower 48 states here in the US. So we are a national and international weather brand in addition to sort of being a DC weather team. So I think anybody who’s interested in weather has a stake in weather, we’ll enjoy our stories. And so our content is available at Washington Post comm slash weather. And you can follow us at at Capital weather on Twitter and on Facebook facebook.com slash capital weather. Those are the best ways to stay abreast of what we’re posting, and to follow our content.

Borna (ClimateAi) 33:38
Awesome. Yeah. And we’ll link those in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Jason Samenow 33:42
Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Borna (ClimateAi) 33:45
Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. If you have any feedback, or you’d like to add your own two cents on the topic discussed today, or if you’ve just got your own ideas about someone that we should discuss in the future, please feel free to shoot me an email at podcast at climate Ai at its core, this podcast is just a way for us to learn and we want to share learnings as we go. So we’re always open to building on these conversations and hearing new perspectives. Thanks for your support and see you next time.

Guest:

Jason Samenow

Weather Editor at the Washington Post and founder of Capital Weather Gang

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