SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF EARTH $ CLIMATE SCIENCES
FALL 2013
Metr/Ocn 590/790
Consulting Meteorology and Oceanography
Credit: 2 units
Room/time: TH604 TTH 1110-1200
Prerequisites: OCN 200, METR 201 and/or consent of instructor.
Instructor
John P. Monteverdi
Office: TH613; Office Phone: Ext 87728
Office Hours MW 1-2; F 11-Noon
Purpose of the Course
Private consulting is rapidly emerging as a major source of income for meteorologists and
oceanographers. Meteorologists and oceanographers are often employed by larger firms
involved in meteorological, environmental, geoscience, ecological or engineering consulting.
In such a situation, the meteorologist is considered a full-time employee. Representative tasks
run from the complex to the simple, include constructing atmospheric or ocean climatologies
for environmental impact reports, climatological station site assessment, air quality
assessments and forecasting, determining the time of high or low tides, assessment of wave
and swell height, etc.
Far more frequently, however, meteorologists and oceanographers contract themselves as
"free lance" consultants to supplement the income which they receive full-time from some
other facet of the profession. In such a case, the meteorologist/oceanographer himself or
herself has the responsibility for fulfilling all aspects of the contract, including the research
and secretarial responsibilities normally foisted off to assistants or interns in larger firms.
Also, it is up to the individual engaged in such activity to make sure that professional and
ethical standards are upheld since no "boss" or superior is in a position to oversee the activity.
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has long realized that the free-lanced services
of meteorologists would be required by all sorts of individuals and concerns. (For example,
the instructor has been contracted at one time or another to produce nowcasts for a winery and
a contruction firm, to "type" weather patterns for a cloud-seeding experiment, to produce
forecasts for windsurfers, to produce a climatological-site appraisal for a client who wished to
purchase a property in Tiburon, to provide rainfall depth and wind gust return period
information to engineering and hydrological consulting firms and to provide forensic
synoptic, climatological, wind, rainfall and hydrometeorological information to law firms
involved in litigation). Since "the going rates" for this activity are quite high, and since the
free lancer has little or none of the overhead suffered by the large consulting firms, there is
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much economic temptation for charlatans and fly-by-nighters to engage in free-lance
consulting. The certified consulting meteorologist (CCM) program of the AMS is meant to
protect the public and the profession from such individuals.
As of this date, there is no stand alone professional certification for oceanographers. It is
common for oceanographers to at least obtain certification through the AMS.
The single most-frequent user of consulting meteorologists is the legal profession which often
contracts professionals for expert witness testimony. Calls to the National Weather Service
Forecast Office (WSFO) in Redwood City by legal firms have gotten so frequent that a list of
available consulting meteorologists is now kept by the phone. These firms will pay typically
from $75 to $100 per hour for consultants with limited experience, to far in excess of $125 for
those with courtroom/deposition experience.
Most contracts with such legal firms have to do with litigation associated with weather-related
damage, such as that produced by floods and, less frequently, by wind. Other cases may have
to do with personal injury or damage related to frost and freeze occurrences. Oftentimes, the
consultant is asked to infer conditions at a location far removed from an official observing
site. In addition, the meteorologist is also frequently asked to help the attorneys int he case by
dispelling misconceptions (such as "it only rains at night"; "the storms are locked over the
mountains"; "it was much foggier in San Francisco in the earlier twentieth century than
now"). In such cases, the jury verdict, and hundreds of millions of dollars, may hinge on the
opinions of the meteorologist.
Since such consulting is becoming more wide-spread, the instructors would like to provide the
students in this course with an overview of the sorts of things that, in their experience, are
required in fulfilling a consulting contract. In addition, since the CCM certificate is becoming
so important, we also seek to guide the students to a "pretend" CCM. The outcomes for the
course can therefore be summarized as follows:
1.
Obtaining the CCM Certificate
2.
Production of Consulting Reports
a. what is involved in producing a forensic meteorology consulting report;
b. what is involved in producing a consulting report in government service.
Since an applicant for the CCM is required to submit a consulting report as part of his or her
examination, the tasks implicit in 2.a. above is also a part of 1. Also, to accomplish the tasks
implicit in 2 above, the student will need to know something about ethics, setting of rates etc.
Logistics
Weekly lab work will be assigned to provide the students with the components of the CCM
examination as described above. Lectures will gvbe designed to provide the students with the
information necessary to complete a consulting contract in the hydrometeorological area. The
report produced will be submitted as part of the student's CCM application. This report will
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concern itself with a real case chosen by the instructors. The case will involve a proxy
deposition and courtroom testimony.
Participation
Another fundamental part of the course centers on undergraduate student interactions and
engagement with the material. I will be expecting each of you to indicate this by your
contributions to group discussions and questions you might direct to me or to the presenters.
Each of you will receive a Participation Grade sheet twice during my portion of the semester:
(1) one about midway to let you know how I think you are doing; and (2) a second one in
which I award your grade for the Participation portion of the class. The Participation Grade
for Graduate Students will be assessed differently and is discussed in the next section.
Graduate Student Expectations
In addition, each graduate student will prepare a version of his or her final Consulting Report
in HTML and will make it accessible to the WWW via the Metr 590/790 Web Site.
Graduate students will also present their Consulting Report to the class in PowerPoint
presentation format. If possible, I will assign graduate students to act as support for the
undergraduate students in the production of their assignments. I will assess Graduate Student
Participation on the basis of how well that goes.
Requirements
The students will complete part of the CCM exam package and the analytical/tabular portions
of the consulting report as homeworks in the first portion of the semester. No explicit grade
weighting is given to the homeworks. However, since the homeworks in sum total will make
up a good portion of the CCM examination and the consulting report, they enter most
prominently into the final grade.
Textbooks
Blech, Elaine, R., 2001: The Consultant's Quick Start Guide: An Action Plan for
Your First Year in Business. Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. 272 pp. ISBN 0787956678
Schutlz, David M., 2009: Eloquent Science: A Practical Guide to Becoming a Better
Writer, Speaker and Atmospheric Scientist. American Meteorological Society. 412
pp. ISBN 978-1-878220-91-2.
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Grading (on Absolute Scale)
Participation
CCM Take-home questions:
CCM Essay:
CCM Oral Exam:
CCM Written Exam
Deposition Questions:
Trial Questions:
Consulting Report:
10%
20%
5%
10%
5%
5%
5%
40%*
*Students Taking This Class as Metr 790
Consulting Report
30%
PowerPoint Class Presentation of Consulting Report 5%
Online Presence of Consulting Report
5%
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