The challenges ahead for U.S. meteorologists
Given what many experts agree is a mounting and serious climate emergency, the American Meteorological Society is, without doubt, a key influencer.
Its Annual Meeting is the world’s largest yearly gathering of the weather, water, and climate community and also attracts policy and decision makers from government and business.
But faced with a huge and growing body of evidence highlighting the central role of human activity in climate change, these are difficult times for the Society. While many US states have embraced the need to cut carbon emissions, a head of state who is an ardent climate change denier can only make the job of convincing the public of the need for urgent action a harder one.
In 2020 Business of Weather spoke to Mary Glackin about the challenges that lay ahead. Mary is the current President of the American Meteorological Society and the former Vice President of Weather Business Solutions at the IBM subsidiary, The Weather Company.
Mary M. Glackin
President, American Meteorological Society
Glackin served as deputy under secretary at NOAA from 2007 to 2012, where she was responsible for day-to-day management of the atmospheric services, research, and coastal and marine stewardship of the $4.9B agency. Prior to that, she represented the Department of Commerce/NOAA to the U.S. Global Change Research Program (2003–07). In this role she cochaired the CCSP workshop, “Climate Science in Support of Decision Making” (2005). Glackin held a number of executive positions at NOAA, including deputy assistant administrator for Satellite Data and Information Services (1999–2003) and AWIPS program manager (1994–99). These experiences position Glackin to well understand the atmospheric and related sciences, technologies, applications and services that AMS seeks to advance to the benefit of society.
Glackin is a Fellow of AMS and a recipient of the Brooks Award (2004). She serves on the Centennial and Awards Nomination Committees, served as commissioner of the Enterprise Commission (2014–16), councilor and member of Executive Committee (2000–03), member of the Planning Commission (2004–06), and member of IIPS (1997–99).
She has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland (1984) with a major in computer science with concentration in atmospheric sciences. She has twice received the U.S. Presidential Rank Award and the Department of Commerce Silver and Bronze Medals. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and is currently serving on the Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate.
