Ultimately the answer to the above question is the same as for any career—if you would enjoy the work, then it’s a good career. Here are some questions you may wish to ask yourself if you are considering a career in meteorology:
Am I curious about the physical world about me, and why it is the […]

In the United States it is estimated that there are about 30,000 to 35,000 men and woman whose professional activities involve some aspect of the atmospheric sciences. Some of the professionals might call themselves atmospheric scientists, environmental engineers, or atmospheric physicists or chemists, but they all deal with the atmosphere in some way or another. […]

According to the most recent Jobs Ranked Almanac, the career of meteorologist now ranks 7th out of 250. This is a big move up from 38th place in the 1988 edition. The rankings are based on factors such as environment, employment outlook, stress, security, physical demands, and income. The really interesting part about the field […]

The massive plumes of smoke from over 600 oil wells set afire by retreating Iraqi troops in Kuwait presented a spectacular image of environmental destruction. Yet, when put in its global perspective, the 12,000 tons per day of smoke accounted for less than 10 percent of the emissions from burning biomass worldwide. The 1,800,000 tons […]

Smoke injected high into the atmosphere cools the planet. This has been repeatedly demonstrated after many volcanic eruptions. The massive smoke pails generated by huge forest fires in British Columbia in 1982 cooled temperatures in the United States by 4°F to 7°F. In 1983, scientist Richard Turco investigated what the effect would be of massive […]

Scientists have long suspected giant meteorite impacts have had a significant impact on the Earth’s climate and ecology. Currently they have identified about 110 preserved meteor impact craters on our planet’s surface, some of which date back as far as 600 million years. Two very large craters located in Canada and South Africa may trace […]

The Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Australia, is composed of coral. The marine micro-organisms that accomplished this marvelous feat of engineering are dying. No one is completely sure what the problem is. It may be man-made pollution and the impact of global climate change, or some aspect of unrecognized marine life cycles.

One partial solution to the continued buildup of CO in our atmosphere is nuclear power. In fact, while no new nuclear plants were opened, nuclear power was recently the only major category to show an increase, up 6.2 percent over the previous year, to supply 21.7 percent of the U.S. total electrical power. Of course, […]

In order to grow crops, humans transport vast amounts of water from one place and apply them in another, often greatly affecting the vegetation in a region. Over large irrigated tracts of land, especially in the western United States, local wind patterns and thundershower development may be affected. In the 1970s, climatologists found rain fall […]

Humans have been conserving fresh water supplies for eons using reservoirs. But construction of reservoirs since the 1950s has been so extensive that artificial lakes now cover twice the area of the Laurentian Great Lakes (some 500,000 square kilometers).
Moreover, if the water had been allowed passage to the oceans, global sea level today would be […]