Why Meteorologists Are Skeptical of Warming

(April 13) -- While meteorologists and climate scientists might seem like professional brethren, there is a big difference in the way global warming is viewed by these groups. Meteorologists, at least television meteorologists, are much more skeptical than are climate scientists, according to a recent study by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas, Austin.

Nearly all climate scientists (97 percent) who are active in research believe that global warming is occurring and that human activity is playing a role, according to a separate University of Chicago survey released in 2009.

Those who participated in the TV weather forecaster survey, on the other hand, held a wide range of beliefs related to global warming. Fifty-four percent of the TV meteorologists surveyed believe that global warming is happening, and 63 percent believe that it's mostly caused by natural changes in the environment. Over a quarter surveyed (27 percent) believe that global warming is a "scam."

If you ask me -- a meteorologist -- it's a matter of perspective.

We meteorologists observe, analyze and predict the weather on a small scale. The atmosphere is measured in countless ways with numerous tools, leading to a better understanding of what causes the weather -- all types of the weather -- by meteorologists than any other group of scientists. One of the results is a deep appreciation of the incredible power of the atmosphere.

From this perspective, a meteorologist is often skeptical of research that cites global warming as the cause of intense weather of the type that they've come to expect based on their understanding.

For instance, when a hurricane season is more active than normal, meteorologists look at the small-scale weather factors, including warmer-than-normal water temperatures, upper-level conditions favorable for storm formation, and not much dry air from Africa. If the active season is then attributed to global warming, as climate research indicated after the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic basin hurricane season, meteorologists are skeptical because they think they already know the reasons: normal weather processes.

This isn't to say that climate scientists don't have an understanding of the extreme nature of weather; however, climate scientists have a much broader perspective than meteorologists. They are the experts in the long-term weather history of the globe, studying ice core samples from lifetimes ago and data from tree rings, gathering global temperature data, and creating computer models that predict what the overall climate will be like hundreds or thousands of years from now.

Everything is looked at through this different lens; climate scientists analyze how these large-scale factors might influence the larger picture of the weather, such as how warmer ocean temperatures might result in more -- and more intense -- hurricanes, rather than looking at the small-scale factors of a given season.

Perhaps meteorologists simply can't see the forest for the trees, but many meteorologists would counter that climate scientists can't see the trees for the forest.