Cover Story: Critical Mass

The National Center for Atmospheric Research's Mesa Lab sits high in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado, but it feels as though it sits atop the world. The building itself, designed by the Chinese-born architectural titan I.M. Pei and used as a location in Woody Allen's Sleepers, is considered a modernist masterpiece, its aesthetic a cross between Stonehenge and Kubrick.

Such majesty, however, seems unimportant to the six dozen scientists assembled in a windowless lecture hall a few steps up from the Lab's main entrance. For two days in September, they've come from all over the world to Boulder for the "National Workshop on Mesoscale Probabilistic Prediction," a title that boasts a sex appeal roughly equaled by the image of John Goodman in a leather unitard. But the serious name points to serious business: Those gathered are participating in the meteorological community's equivalent of a G8 Summit, where what's being wrestled with is nothing short of a potentially landmark change in the way weather will be predicted in the United States.

At the front of the room is Don Berchoff, Director of Science and Technology for the National Weather Service, a governmental subsidiary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Number one is, leave your baggage at the door. Because quite frankly, that's not going to get us where we want to go," Berchoff admonishes the attendees. "Number two is, figure out how to work together as a nation. We have an American way of doing business; we're all individuals and we're all competitive. The reason why Europeans beat our pants is they know how to work together better."

Berchoff then asserts that the United States will ultimately overtake Europe as the leader in the meteorological field, drawing a chuckle from the crowd, which includes a significant number of foreigners.

"It's more than just saving lives," Berchoff continues. "It's about how we can help our businesses and government save money by avoiding the weather. Can you imagine if we could forecast a thunderstorm within a 10-mile radius with 70 percent probability? Do you know how powerful that would be?"

Berchoff cedes the podium to his co-chair, Cliff Mass, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington. Dressed in a blue blazer, a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and cushioned loafers, and boasting a shock of curly, salt-and-pepper hair with a mind of its own, Mass looks every bit the stereotypical college instructor. The theme of his chat is effectively the theme of the entire workshop: whether, how, and how soon the National Weather Service and the American meteorological community at large will move from a largely deterministic model of communicating weather forecasts to more complex, computer-driven "probabilistic" models.

"The time for concrete action has come," announces Mass in his deep, swift, Gotham-tinged vocal delivery. "Let's face it: This is our health care."

He continues his presentation by cuing up a slide of a recent five-day deterministic forecast from KING-5, deriding its simplicity in a mock-weatherman voice. But before finishing, Mass aims his critical bazooka at his brainy colleagues. "Even when we try to provide probabilistic information, we're not doing a good job," he says, citing a shortage of technological firepower and institutional open-mindedness before classifying the U.S.'s lost leadership in its homegrown field of weather prediction as "an embarrassment."

Such is the unflinchingly candid manner in which Mass gets his point across, a style gleaned from the famed astronomer Carl Sagan, whom Mass studied under at Cornell and whom he considers "the best communicator I ever met."

"One thing [Sagan] felt strongly about was scientists shouldn't just write papers; we have to interact with society and the media," says Mass.

And interact Mass has. He delivers a weekly forecast every Friday on KUOW, and has helped develop a local, Web-based version—called Probcast—of what he feels should be the national standard for weather prediction. His frequently updated personal blog, cliffmass.blogspot.com, has developed a large, devoted following, and his 2008 book The Weather of the Pacific Northwest—which looks like a textbook, is titled like a textbook, and reads like a textbook—was a local best seller. Furthermore, he's become a go-to meteorological authority for worldwide media such as The New York Times and The Economist.

That the Emerald City is home to one of the country's foremost weather academics is very Seattle. Yet stylistically, the Long Island–reared Mass is anything but. A passionate "math activist" who would like to return to the days of calculator-free "explicit instruction" in elementary, middle, and secondary schools, Mass and a pair of co-plaintiffs currently have a lawsuit pending against Seattle Public Schools, in which they claim the District's shift to a "Discovery Math" curriculum has widened the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students. (A January court date has been set.)

"Instead of getting the answer right, it's far more important to write an essay about your thought process," says Mass of an instructional movement he claims has led to a severe deterioration of math skills among his collegiate students. "I've had students in my office crying because they've had to give up their dream of becoming meteorologists. They couldn't pass the math. The most demanding aspects of my field are being dominated by people overseas."