I am honored to have seen page proofs of Gary Lackmann’s new book Midlatitude Synoptic Meteorology: Dynamics, Analysis, and Forecasting to be published later this year by the American Meteorological Society. For this book, Gary goes back to the original meaning of the word synoptic (“forming a summary or synopsis”). Twelve chapters summarize and synthesize all scales of motion, from the planetary down to the microphysical, not just those on the synoptic scale.

This is the first new book on synoptic meteorology in 20 years, and its appearance is long overdue. Lackmann’s book updates previous textbooks with new concepts and synthesizes material that has not appeared in textbooks before. His last three chapters on numerical weather prediction, weather forecasting, and manual analysis contain some material that hasn’t been updated since Petterssen’s (1956) textbook.

What is best about this book is that it rises to the challenge offered by Rossby: to bridge the gap between theory and observations. No other book on synoptic meteorology had done this as throughly or as effectively. Lackmann skillfully weaves back and forth from QG, PV, and EnKF to cold fronts aloft, cold-air damming, and cold-air outbreaks.

I could quibble about some points, but I won’t. You’ll want this book. In terms of style and content, it is the perfect companion to Markowski and Richardson’s Mesoscale Meteorology in Midlatitudes. These two books form an ideal and unique set from which to build a solid undergraduate or graduate curriculum blending synoptic-scale and mesoscale dynamical meteorology and forecasting.

Not since the 1990s has a useful, intelligent synoptic meteorology book been written by an expert in the field. Lackmann fulfills a desperate need among today’s teachers and students.

[Disclaimer: Gary and I went to my very first Eric Clapton concert together (Tacoma 1988). Later, we ended up at SUNY Albany together, part of the early to mid 1990s milieu there. I consider him a close friend and one of the best synoptic meteorologists and teachers out there now.]

Have you read an article where the author talks about “an important process” or “the important role of another process”?

Do these sort of platitudes go in one of your ears and out the other? Are you convinced by the author’s use of the word “important” that it truly is an important process? Or, do you want to see the supporting evidence for why it is important?

How about quantifying exactly how important that particular process is? If calculations show that varying the input only led to a 20% change in the output, is that an “important” effect?

Given that multiple processes usually come together to produce a weather event, is isolating one process as “important” a realistic description of how the atmosphere works?

They say that the First Rule of Writing is to show, not tell. Thus, you should avoid telling the readers how important something is, and show them instead.

(Image from smartpassiveincome.com)

Several authors have criticized the use of the term overrunning to represent warm-frontal lifting here and here.

I don’t need to add anything to those Web pages, but I do want to point out that the definition provided in the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology is wrong and ambiguous.

overrunning—A condition existing when an air mass aloft is in motion relative to another air mass of greater density at the surface.
This term is usually applied in the case of warm air ascending the surface of a warm front or quasi-stationary front.

An air mass aloft will always be less dense than air at the surface. Therefore, every instance of sheared flow could classify as overrunning by that definition. As Stoelinga et al. (2002, BAMS) point out about ascent over fronts, it’s not the density or temperature that is important, but the static stability. The warm air flows over a warm-frontal zone because the warm air is less stable than the frontal zone (highly stable). With this ambiguity and the problems already stated, I recommend that everyone avoid the use of overrunning.

Consider the following quotes from that article.

When we contemplate the astonishing magnitude [of the literature] in any department of science … there is the greatest reason to apprehend that, from the continual multiplication of new essays which are merely repetitions of others that have been forgotten, the sciences will shortly be overwhelmed by their own unwieldy bulk. – Thomas Young (1807)

In 1894, a letter to Nature was complaining: ‘A search for previously published work is already sufficiently difficult to cause many to shrink from the task: ten years hence it may be expected to be the most laborious and thankless work which the investigator has to perform’.

Chemical literature is fast becoming unmanageable and uncontrollable from its very vastness. Not only is the number of papers increasing from year to year, but new journals are constantly being established. Something must be done in order to assist chemists to remain in touch with their subject and to retain their hold on the literature generally. – H.E. Armstrong (1894)

Vickery, B., 1999: A century of scientific and technical information. Journal of Documentation, 55 (5), 476-527.

Although it is wordier than warm or cold, the meaning is precise.

3 month thesis by James Hayton has a free guide that you can sign up to receive called “The Short Guide to Writing Fast.” Inside I found this concise quote about when you should cite a paper (p. 20):

You should only cite a paper…
• To support one of your arguments
• To provide extra information
• As sources of reliable data
• To provide context or comparison for your work.

Great advice!

Do you really think the audience needs to know what the basic content of your scientific presentation is going to be? Even in longer talks, is such a slide really needed?

When I see one of these slides, I think to myself that I have 30-90 seconds to daydream some more before the talk starts. The speaker immediately has lost my attention.

That’s not what you want to do to make a good first impression and get the audience enthused about your work.

Instead, motivate the talk, tell a story about why this is an interesting problem, or start off with a shocking fact that demands explanation.

Do anything to keep the audience interested in you and not thinking about where they are going to go for lunch once the session is over.

(Image by Sean Seaver at P212121.com, who also is no fan of outline slides.)

Russ Schumacher and I have been discussing the current online battle between those who advocate one space between sentences and two spaces. The debate started with Slate’s Farhad Manjoo, then was picked up by The Atlantic, citing Tom Lee.

I have to admit that my typing instructor in seventh grade taught us to use two spaces, and it is a habit I can’t break. It is nice that some publishing software like LaTeX adjusts automatically and makes the result look professionally typeset, although Word is not quite so clever.

So, what are your thoughts?
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In Eloquent Science (pp. 96–97), Mark Stoelinga discusses the introduction of new scientific terminology. His essay arose out of a discussion the two of us had about how bad terminology would get into the literature (sometimes by authors who seemed intent on always giving a new name to something that didn’t necessarily need a new name). Then, these terms would be almost impossible to get rid of. His four points:

1. Use existing terminology whenever possible.

2. Follow existing customs and conventions.

3. Terms must be scientifically accurate, precise, and descriptive.

4. Try to get terminology right the first time, and avoid subsequent changes.

So, if you agree with the above four points, is introducing a new term upsidence really needed?