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Dr. Marshall Shepherd: from Science Fair to Science Leader · Atmosphere with Emily Gracey

• Emily Gracey: Marshall Shepherd didn't set out to study the weather. I wanted to be an entomologist, actually. I didn't want to be a meteorologist at first. Well I He wanted to study bugs until a severe honeybee allergy turned that dream into a dangerous gamble. And I almost died. I found out I was highly allergic to honeybees, and that's pre everybody carrying epipins around too. Suddenly with a science fair deadline looming, he needed a new plan. Fast. And I said, you know what? I need a science project that won't kill me. He switched to weather, built his own instruments out of stuff around the house. So I made all these weather instruments, anemometers, barometers, hair hygrometers, and so forth. And I started taking measures. Can a sixth grader predict the weather? Tried to develop a little predictive model for He won the district science fair and meteorology had him for life. From that point on, pun intended, I was bitten by the weather bug. That sixth grade project was just the beginning. The kid who built instruments out of household scraps grew up to break barriers, becoming the first African American to earn a PhD in meteorology from Florida State University, and later a leading voice at NASA and the American Meteorological Society. Today he's the Associate Dean and Director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia. He's also a senior contributor to Forbes and hosts the Weather Channel's Weather Geeks. Dr. Shepherd is my guest today on Atmosphere, and no topic is off the table. The case for the end-to-end scientist, and why he believes research means nothing if you can't communicate it. Who actually suffers the most when severe weather hits, and why the same storm can hit two neighborhoods so differently? The fight over public versus private weather data. and the real ongoing battle to get life-saving information to the people who need it most. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie, and this is Atmosphere, a podcast where science becomes conversation. Each week I sit down with the experts behind the forecasts, the research, and the headlines to explore not just the science, but the human stories behind it. Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us. Well, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, I'm so honored to have you on Atmosphere today. you know, obviously a big fan of your work. I think maybe we've met in passing, perhaps at an AMS conference or something. But thank you so much for coming on Atmosphere. Great to have like a fellow podcast host to talk to today as well. that's so neat. As as as I'm starting this podcast, I just ended my own podcast doing a show for the weather channel, Weather Geeks, of course, that I I know many people are familiar with because we started it. as a television show and now we do it as a podcast and streaming show. Yeah, I love that podcasts have this kind of reach now too, that they're almost more popular than TV shows. And you know, people can just listen and digest it all on the go. So it's yeah, it's so neat. I a weather channel's brand is such that, you know, we we do get a pretty hefty lit listenership with our podcast, but you know, they still have this really built-in market that is really interesting demographically, as you well know being in the media, The landscape has changed in terms of TV viewers viewership for sure. they have a very loyal f following, it seems in terms of their television viewership and some of their personalities, but Weather Geeks was one of the vehicles that really helped them move into the podcast and streaming of weather information and content too. Yeah, I think I worked at the Weather Channel twenty five years ago, so lots of changes since then. But yes, the loyal following has not changed. well, I want to get a little background on you because you've well, for one, your resume was like a CVS receipt. Like it just kept going and going. I want to hear, dig into like what what drove all of this. Can we go like way back to your childhood? Let's go back to like little Marshall Shepherd in north in northern Georgia, right? This is where you grew up. Canton, Georgia. It's just at that time it was just a little rural town north of Atlanta. Now it's just suburban Atlanta. But yeah, well, to the story of me and weather goes back to catching insects, actually. so I think about this, you know, fifth grade. I wanted to be an entomologist, actually. I didn't want to be a meteorologist at first, but I was stung by a honeybee and I almost died. I found out I was highly allergic to honeybees. And that's pre-evody carrying epipins around, too. And so sixth grade science project came around and I said, you know what? I need a science project that won't kill me, literally. So I I had a I needed a plan B. So I switched to weather. I said, I like weather too. Let's see if I can make weather instruments from things that I have around the house. So I made all these weather instruments, anemometers, barometers, hair hygrometers, and so forth. And I start taking measurements and try to develop a little predictive model for my little community based on my and I I the the science project was called Can a Sixth Grader Predict the Weather? And I won the district science fair. And from that point on, pun intended, I was bitten by the weather bug. But I knew I didn't want to be a television or broadcast meteorologist. I was more interested in the hows and whys of weather. Even then I started looking into where were the best places to go to study meteorology in the South. I wanted to stay a little bit close to the South. So Florida State University kept coming up, really top program. And so I ended up going there for my bachelor's, master's, and ultimately my PhD. Okay. So Florida State through and through. Where did you have an influence as a child? Like a lot of people, especially our age and older, grew up not even knowing like what meteorology was or even that like science fields were an option. Was there like a a role in your life that was like No, it's so funny because particularly and yeah, I'm former president of the American Meteorological Society and about only two percent of the AMS's membership is African American. So sciences in general at the time of that I was growing up was not in my face at all. My mother was a teacher, my dad was a teacher, but I grew up just with my mom, single parent. So that's why I was always outside catching bees and and sex, because I was an only child with a single mom teacher. but my mom went to Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University. And through my visits with her there, I learned about Dr. George Washington Carper, who was a scientist. who looked like me, but he studied the peanut and he did all these really interesting things with peanuts. And I just became fascinated by how many things he did with a peanut. Later in life, I learned that Dr. Carver took weather observations too, because it was so important to know the weather for his agricultural sciences. But I read all I could read about him because that was the only s scientist I had access to through books. Go to the Canton Public Library and get books about Dr. What George Washington Carver. So I mean that was really my exposure to a scientist. Later, you know, I got to visit, I think Ken Cook, who was a local TV meteorologist in Atlanta on the, I I guess I think Fox Five of the Fox affiliate at the time. So I got to sort of visit him, but I I wasn't interested in that. I I I said I was fortunate enough or geeky enough to be the valedictorian of my high graduating class in high school. And I said in my valedictory address that I wanted to work for NASA one day. And I didn't know how that was gonna happen, how I was gonna get there, but I did end up working in NASA after my PhD, work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for twelve years and was deputy project scientist for a mission called the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission. So I that was w always what interested me more. And through connections at Florida State to NASA, I was able to realize that dream. I read that you're the first African American PhD graduate from Florida State. Is that true? This was the nineties though. That that seems like alarming. It's it's it is alarming. And I don't know that there's been one since, to be candid. I I couldn't. Seriously. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's you know, I you know, I I I on the one hand, I take pride in that, but to your point, I also am like yikes. I mean, I'm not that old first or second. I was second African American president of the American Meteorological Society too, the AMS behind Warren Washington. we now have Alan Seals in that role now as well. So yeah, we s we still, you know, as much as society has progressed and advanced, I would say in my community and in my my background and for folks still probably see things like medical doctor, lawyer, going into business, teaching, those or Pathways that are front and center. Research, meteorologists, or atmospheric scientists is not at the front of the list of people in places where I grew up. at an AMS meeting, I was talking to a group of people, like Howard graduates, and they were explaining to me just like this essential role that Howard University has done to change that dynamic. But we still have like a long ways to go. Like any insight here into How we make that progress? Yeah. So I by the way, I sat on the advisory board for Howard's program in atmospheric sciences when it when it was stood up several a couple of decades ago. I was still at NASA and and DC at the time. So yeah, that program alone has made a lot of inroads into the federal scientist. Gotta give shout out to Jackson State University too and HBCU in Mississippi because they've long had the first undergraduate department of meteorology and meteorology degree at an undergraduate institute. But then there are you know just lots of universities and opportunities out there, irrespective of whether they're HBCUs or not. I've written on this in Forbes. As you well know, I'm a senior contributor to Forbes magazine and I've I've written and it it doesn't matter whether you're an African American or a a woman, maybe a white, but from a poor rural Appalachian community. If you don't see mentorship and opportunities that are a pathways to those opportunities, I I think you're more likely to sort of sort of relax the things that are familiar to you. And so as I said, I didn't have meteorologists and climate scientists and air quality specialists around me. And I didn't know anyone that did that. But you know, I I, you know, I I was just fascinated by weather. So I think you it things are getting better, but I think, you know, we still need to sort of make sure we have those mentors. we have opportunities. One of the reasons a true story here When I when I was contacted by Keith Sider, the executive director at the time of the AMS, and said, Your name has come up to run for AMS president to be on the ballot. And I was very hesitant. I was like, run for AMS president, especially after I found out who I was running against. But then I talked to one of my my mentors, Dr. Warren Washington, who presidential medal of science for his work in climate science and first African American AMS president. He's like, you know, think about this. Think about how many people will see you in that role. Think about the influences that you can have in that role. And so, you know, I used to Hard to say no to that. You know, but I I you know, I said, well, okay, I'll run, I probably won't win anyhow, because I was really relatively young. AMS is a storied historic organization. here I am, this young guy. I think I was night round night, 2013. So yeah, I was still pretty young, relatively speaking, compared to who's been the if you go back and look at the history of who's been the president of the AMS. And so you know, I I I use that as a platform to one, advanced the the mission of the AMS for sure. But I also knew in the back of my mind, you know, if somebody out there can see that, he can become the AMS president or a scientist at NASA or head of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia, maybe I can too. I wonder too, if just science fields in general, we tend to be people who are not like as good at communication as other fields. And so we're just not as visible in the community. It's almost like we need TV meteorologists to be that PR agent for, you know, for meteorologists and just scientists in general to get kids interested. Well, yeah, the the the television meteorologist is the only scientist most people see in a given day, period. that if they and again for those that are still watching the broadcast news, but because most most meteorologists these days are degreed meteorologists and so but the landscape is changing but you know even still when i you know and then when i would tell people that i'm a meteorologist they'd immediately ask me and i know you kind of worked in that that world but i would people ask me what channel am i on and i said i've never before channel you know, I think only eight to ten percent of the meteorology community is in broadcast, but I but that's you all in your prior profession are the face of meteorology to most of the public. And so that that's very important for us to understand. But like I said, my I cut my teeth in the federal agency at NASA and now I'm in academia. we have, as you well know, we have meteorologists in the private sector and military and and consulting businesses and so forth. So it's a it's a much broader field than the public conveys. But, you know, I remember back in the day, AMS had this thing called the station scientists program. And so it was position positioning, as you know, meteorologists as the station scientists because you were reporting on meteors and tsunamis and volcanic eruptions and every aspect of science. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've been in that role where you're sitting at the station and there's, you know, like an earthquake. And I'm like, I'm not a seismologist, but they're coming, you're the only scientist at the station. So they're coming in and they're like, we need 30 seconds on what just happened in this different country. And you're quickly like trying to come up with something. That's the challenge. You know, I you know, you know, I'm a member of the National Academy of Sciences and have all the bells and whistles is a serious scholar in academia, but I don't kind of really Sorry, root myself in that. I think it, I think that kind of ivory tower mentality can often constrict or constrain scientists because they're so narrowly focused on the studies and their research and their labs, which I do all of that too. But I've also spent a good deal of my career thinking about how to effectively communicate weather, climate, and why what we do is so important. And oftentimes I think a lot of the personalities I've written on this that go into the sciences, art, as you hinted at earlier. public facing and don't want to be, or even have this notion that if they are talking to the media or testifying or tweeting or posting on Facebook, they're less serious scientists somehow. Are they popular? There's the there's something called the Carl Sagan effect that many scientists will throw out there. Well, I I have dropped the water balloon bomb on that theory because I've written and shown that you can be a successful scientist and still post on social media and engage, host a podcast, do a TV show, testify before Congress. in fact, we better do those things. We better be in those spaces because that's why we are seeing challenges now with public trust in science, understanding why funding is going for things like you know, new weather models and new types of radar. the the weather app that people are holding in their hand right now, or that radar that they're looking at, that didn't come poof from the weather ferry. That came from years and years of weather research and development. And so Scientists like you and I, we have to engage. Otherwise, people will fill the void that we leave behind with missing disinformation and agendas. Mm-hmm. And I love it too, because it keeps you talking with other people. Like you're not isolated. I I get to talk to somebody new every day and like learn something new every day. And I love this about your Forbes articles too, because they're very accessible. They're not like anybody can read them and anybody can really understand them. I don't Count my I have no higher education. I have a bachelor's degree. And then that was a long time ago. So like I like that I can read them and I'm like, this is a great idea for a podcaster. my gosh. I was just wondering about that the other day. I feel like every time I'm just wondering about something, you put out an article and you address it. And so it's really useful. I'm curious where these topics are coming from, or if you're just like laying in bed at night and all of a sudden you're like, I need to write about this. Literally the latter. I I'm literally writing most of those Forbes pieces at between 530 and 630 in the morning. And it's something just came to mind. Sometimes it's just an event, current event. Like for example, this morning I just wrote an article and I entitled it the the secret weapon that that will help us this hurricane season. And I deliberately entitled it that because we know there are all those wacky conspiracy theories out there about weather machines and cloud machines and generators and hard. And so I deliberately tease the title with that, but really I was just talking about El Nino and the fact that El Nino tends to help sort of suppress Atlantic hurricane season activity. So sometimes I'll anchor in what's going on in the moment, but then there are these more evergreen topics, these topics that will you write them in Forbes and they'll just kind of live on. They're not anchored to a particular event or a an an occasion. And those just like I'll give you an example. The most widely read Forbes article I have ever written. And I think it had, I don't know, millions and millions and millions of reads. Came from me sitting there watching my then teen son walk out of the house in the middle of summer in a hoodie. And I said, Why do these teen boys mostly wear hoodies in the middle of summertime? So I bit dug a little bit, did some deep, deep diving on it. And there there actually is a little science behind it. And so I wrote an article on what sort of the motivation for why these teenagers wear hoodies in 80, 90 degree heat. And it has to do with some with body imaging. It had some to do with security blanketing, and sort of the feet and so forth. there there was really some interesting sort of you know writing out there on there. So that's that and that just came from literally that observation and watching my son walk out of the house. That is fascinating. I'm gonna go back and read that. Did you have any insight into like why they wear shorts in the winter? I have seen that too. I You know, it's funny, even at I I used to ask that question a lot too. And then I even said I need to write that article. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and my son likes the hoodies too. I think like sensory wise, it does feel like protection a little bit. Yeah. But then he also has like he has a jean jacket that he wears all s he keeps wearing it out in like extreme heat. I don't I don't I don't pretend to understand what's going on there. I dig into a little of that. I mean I and I revisited it The so you'll there are probably two articles out there, but the first one probably was written about five years ago. But yeah, the the one that you wrote this morning, I was kind of I saw the title and I was like, ooh, what's like what is the secret weapon? Is there something I haven't heard about? Like this would be a good podcast. I'm scrolling through and then I was like, did I miss it? It's literally El Nino. Yeah. And like I said, it was a ploy. Even I had a guy on my Facebook page is like, well, when you're using secret weapon, it makes it seem like there's something that we're controlling. I was like, George, that's the point. I was trying because scientists know there's no secret weapon or anything we're controlling. But, and then this is again something sometimes our colleagues more in this more scholarly side of the house, there's a different approach that you need when you're writing for public or speaking for public consumption. Yes. Well know this. And I wrote an article several years ago in Forbes called Nine Tips for Communicating Science to Non-Scientists. And the first tip was know your audience. And so I often see many colleagues, you know, they'll give the same spiel or the same talk that they would give at the AMS to the rotary club. And you can't do that. You've got to completely target and flip your messaging. You got to get to the bottom line right up point. You've got to use hooks that will draw them in. So if I'm writing an article, El Nino teleconnections change jet stream patterns, creating more shear, which reduces hurricanes. That's really exciting to me. But the average person might not flip to that. But they do secret weapon. let me click on that and then I can hook them and teach. So Yeah. I I put out a Substack article this week and it was titled The Sexiest Night for Corals of the Year. It's all about like coral reproduction. That'll draw you in. Right. And there are just some people that are not in our field and in other science and STEM fields, they're not wired that way. They want things You know, that and that's why that you we gotta, you know, that there's that that's why there is this narrative out there that a serious scholar is not gonna water down the science or that are not willing to sort of use that kind of language on a s on a title of an article. Well, I am a serious science, check the record scientist. I'm in the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. I I am a fellow of the AMS. So I have all those credentials, but I also understand the value of broad c broader communication and and I've I've spent a good portion of my career trying to hone that craft too. Yeah. And I I like I make it my goal when I'm interviewing these scientists, because I I find that they're not dry people. They're just used to presenting dry material in a very academic way. But if you can just have a conversation with someone, you can draw out the information and then make, you know, like these little notes with them. Like, so when you say this, do you mean this? So it it takes good conversation too and platforms like this to really to share that information. And it's and it's the it there is it there's a flaw in the system because when we are trained to get our master's degrees and PhDs, we are trained to do the research, write it up, write a paper, go present it at a conference, go get a grant, do more research and repeat that cycle. In our graduate programs today and in the past, we aren't trained with media training, with Editorialized writing with persuasive writing, with ways of communicating. Those are not a part of the training regimen of a scientist. And so I have been talking recently about something called the end-to-end scientist paradigm. And so in this end-to-end, I want to completely, and I do this with my own graduate students at the University of Georgia. I am trying to completely change how we train scientists. Yeah, we do all that other thing, the scholarly things that I laid out. But I also teach them how to talk to the media and give them books about reading a media training and and encourage them to write op-eds and tweet and engage in different ways. So this end-to-end scientist concept, if you want to know more about it, I wrote about it for the National Academy of Engineering in a piece called The Case for the Science Popularizer. So if you you read that little blog, it's it's really just an essay. I I walk through this whole concept of the end-to-end scientist concept. Okay. Well, here's a question for you because I did a podcast recently with Jamie Rome from the National Hurricane. He's awesome. And we had a little back and forth talking about a, you know, missing element of education when it comes to communication in the meteorology field. And I put this out there on social media and there was some backlash from the academic community. And I believe the thought process was kind of We're having to hit this standard for our National Weather Service. We have to hit all these standards. We don't have space for this. So how do you suggest we work this in? So as an academ academic, do you have like recommendations there? That is false. I I I I I am the director of the University of Georgia's atmospheric sciences program. I have 80, 70 or 80 student, undergraduate students studying meteorology right now. Yes, we have to we there's a core curriculum that you have to meet for. AF AMS requirements, National Weather Service Federal Requirement. But guess what? You also have to take in your two years beforehand or in your electives. There are plenty of electives that you can take. When I was in college, I took public speaking. That the I did I didn't have to force that. That was I had an elective that I needed to take in that space. I took writing classes. I I the Dave Schultz, who's a colleague, has one really Great book that I recommend for anybody listening called Eloquent Science. And it talks about communicating. These are things that don't have to be done within the curricular space. But yes, by the way, within the curricular space, there's plenty of room. And again, for anybody to push back on you, I'll push right back. And I've got enough standing in the field to do it. there's plenty of room in a college curriculum to augment. it does not just have to be, and again, I know this because I direct. And manage a program that's teaching the next generation of meteorologists. And we have graduates out of our program that are now on the Weather Channel and that are forecasting at one point for the White House. So we're producing big time meteorologists that also know how to do these things. you know, we've been talking about your Forbes article. One of them that really caught my attention recently was you highlighted an author who had written a book, and this book. was talking about something that really fascinates me because it it seems like a problem and I wanna know answers, but there don't seem to be answers. Okay, so to get into it, you wrote about weather impacts, extreme weather impacts, and the inequities that exist among various communities. So I've done a podcast before kind of honing in on climate impacts and the inequities there with Heather McTear. Tony, do you know who she is? but I want to talk about the weather side of this as well. And I think this became very obvious during Hurricane Katrina, but maybe some younger people who are listening don't fully understand that. Or maybe some people listening don't fully understand it because it doesn't impact them. So can you kind of take me through that? Yeah. Yeah, people are very individual or me centric. And we all are guilty of that. So I, you know, I'm sitting here in a really nice neighborhood in Atlanta, metropolitan Atlanta area, and my house is fully insured. I know if there's a tornado war watch or a hurricane watch, you know, I can evacuate and go stay in a hotel if I want to, or if my house is damaged, I know I have the adequate insurance. If I took that me perspective that everybody is in that situation, then shame on me. Because the reality is. There are large segments of our population that when a tornado, flood, heat wave, or hurricane comes through, everyone's exposed to that weather event, but certain people have different levels of vulnerability and sensitivity to it based on their income, their their wealth, their health, and so forth. So I I've actually published some work with graduate students on this in the past as well. And Dr. Jamie Sims is who you're talking about, her book, Protect the House. she's written a she grew up in Mississippi. She went to Jackson State and Howard, former NOAA scientist. And so she is writing that book. it's a really very short, easy read, common sense book that just is trying talking to her people, to people that aren't even scholarly, may not have had any college, maybe does have some college, maybe has a lot of college. And it's dealing with this fact that different people are gonna be. have different outcomes. You can take a neighborhood A and neighborhood B. They both might be directly impacted by a hurricane, but neighborhood B, because of its level of income and sort of well, might be more sensitive and tight might take far more years to recover from that event. And we see that all of the time. And then on top of that, there are cultural norms. And this has nothing to do with race or poverty or income. Some people Don't trust forecasts. They might say, you know, Jenny Jamise in that book tells a story of how she named the book Protect the House. It was something her father said when Hurricane Katrina was coming. He's like, you know, no, no, no, no. Y'all go on, but I'm going to stay and protect the house. And so I really would encourage you to have Jamise on. You can talk to talk to me after put you in connect contact with her because she tells an amazing story. But this is a real, the sort of weather vulnerabilities based on income. Communities of color, age. Yeah, one of the things we know, we just saw we're we're we're recording this podcast now in mid-July or so. So we've seen some significant heat waves in Europe and in the US. And many people were dying in Europe from a triple-digit heat, heat that they didn't expect because many of those homes don't have air conditioning in Europe, places like England and France. So guess who's dying most? From these severe heat waves here and abroad, tend to be the elderly and people that are living in places without air conditioning because they never expected to need it. So this is an area that we need to be very cognizant of. That's why we're seeing more. And I know you've probably done shows on the convergence of social and behavioral sciences in the weather field. We've got great models, got great satellites, great radars, AI is helping us. The technology is great, but if we are not getting the forecasts across people didn't get it, didn't understand it, or didn't consume it, then was it a good forecast at all? Does language play a big role in that? Absolutely. and I, you know, I've taught, you know, there's a young scholar at the at University of Illinois who has been the Joseph Trujillo Falcon. Yes, yes. You know him, I'm sure. Yes, he's delightful. Amazing scholar. I had him visit my class virtually a few years ago. he has been along with others within the National Weather Service and even at the Weather Channel. I will say the shout out to the Weather Channel because they they've they had some Spanish like language efforts within the Weather Channel. Crisia Negron, who's a former colleague and FSU peer of mine at who was at the Weather Service, sort of moving some of these issues along. Because one of the things that we know is certain warning words don't translate the same way from here. Spanish, for example, or maybe French or Korean. I I I live here in Gwinnett County in Atlanta, one of one of the largest counties in the Metro Atlanta area. We have a large Korean population, large Hispanic population, large populations from different countries in Africa, and then I'm sort of other populations that you would think about for the US as well. how are people receiving those messages if they were to speak a different language? But then I also want to go back to sort of the sort of the disparities. I I wrote an article in Forbes. I don't know if you saw this one about it was inspired by a sort of GIS or geographical analysis showing where there are gaps in do Doppler radar coverage here in the South. And we have these overlapping radars all around the neighbor the nation, but there were little gaps where there may not be adequate coverage or the radar beam is too high. And many of those gap regions were in high populations of communities of color in the south. And we already know that southern po communities, irrespective of race, or have particular sensitivity and vulnerability to severe weather, because again, we don't have these sort of flat, clear sight lines like they have in the Great Plains. We have more densely populated areas here in the South, more trees, and there's also more mobile homes and homes that aren't designed to withstand Tornadic storms and hurricanes, yet we know from peer-reviewed studies, scientific studies by people like Victor Gensini at Northern Illinois University and Harold Brooks at the National Severe Storms Lab, who published a paper several years ago showing the frequency of tornadoes is increasing in the South. Now, the Great Plains is still the king or queen, whatever you want to call it, of tornadic activity, but there is more increased activity in the South, but we have greater percentage of vulnerable populations here as well. So that's a problem. I wonder, you know, there's like mobile radars are becoming such a thing. Do you think there's any potential for like some of these like NSSL's mobile radars to be plopped in these places during storm season? No, we're already doing it. Not so much as there's a company out there called Climavision that's putting small X-Band radars around. You might want to talk to them. Chris Good is the CEO of Climavision. They're putting little small radars out there. we have actually purchased with Georgia Tech, University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. purchased a small X-Band radar that we we put here in the eastern part of the Atlanta area to cover the northeastern part of the state. So yeah, we are starting to see different at, you know, I think about back to University of Louisiana, Monroe, back in the day, they recognized that there was a significant radar gap in that part of the Gulf Gulf states. And they worked with the National Weather Service and purchased a radar at that university. And now it's a part of the the network of radars when you pull up the network of radar. So there are gap-filling efforts like that happening with universities like ours, but also with private industry like the like climavision and so forth. Okay. Well you've opened the door now to talk about public and private partnerships. So tell me what you see for the future here. What's like an ideal situation? Because there is kind of it's like a polarizing topic for some. Some people are like, you know Private should take over all of everything going on with weather. What do you see as like the best scenario? I disagree with that. What definitely the private sector should be engaged in partnering. by the way, things are a lot better now in that public-private partnership than when I came in as a young whippersnapper graduate student and young professional in the AMS in the early nineties. there are so much public private partnership. There are commissions within the AMS and the NWA that are that are working together. on this. So you know, I think back to my time as a scientist at NASA. I was a civil servant. I was a federal NASA scientist, but I worked side by side with federal contractors from industry on designing these new weather satellite systems and new models and so forth. So there's always been strong public-private partnership. I personally bel believe that a weather forecast is a public good, just like fire firefighter services or your police, you know, yeah, I When I call, I want to know it's there, right? I I don't I I don't wanna have to pay to play for my weather forecast. Now, at the same time, I absolutely know that private industry can provide value add. Private industry can sometimes innovate faster. And so why don't we, and that's what we're doing, why don't we leverage the strengths of both? the leverage, the strength, the reliability and the public good nature of federal weather information, climate information, weather balloons, models, and so forth, and let the private sector do what they are currently doing. They're innovating. They're companies that are I I I still want weather watches and warnings to be issued by an a an authority that doesn't have a profit mar margin at play. That's important to me. But I very much believe that the private public Enterprise and partnership is vital to the health, vitality, and sustainability of our weather, water, climate enterprise. And surely goes back to kind of keeping that equity at a place. I mean, if you privatize everything, that's gonna that would become much worse, right? I just say at the end of the day, do we privatize if I if I my house is on fire, I'm am I calling a private firefighter? Or if I'm if I'm being robbed, am I calling a private police officer? No. I mean, those are public services that matter to people. And the National Weather Service is one of the biggest values that the American taxpayer pays. When you look at the what I think is too small budget of the National Weather Service is way too small for the think about this. Every economic, national security, agricultural, energy, transportation, infrastructure part of our society depends on the weather. And so it is a public good that should not be sort of sort of parsed out based on access or a pay to play. And so no, I don't mind at all. And this happens all the time. There are plenty of private services out there that provide sort of value added service for clients. That's not a problem at all. people should and have the ability to do that. But I want to pull up a weather forecast in the same way that I'm able to think know that. the my tax pay payer the paying dollars paid for a fire truck to come and put out a fire at my house. Yeah, in the same way that weather is part of everybody's life, it also is part of everybody's life. So everybody has a very strong opinion on how it should be handled. Absolutely. Now one thing that I, you know, and again, I don't know if you've had them on the podcast, but shout out to Doug Hildeprand and Jen Jennifer Sprague. they've star started up a new sort of weather organization. And that's something that's needed because, you know, first of all, weather has always been very has always had very strong bipartisan support and and at the DC level down to the local level. I I mean the weather doesn't care if you're blue or red. It just blows and rains and does the things that weather does. So, you know, I've I've you you I I hope that weather remains bipartisan because it affects everyone and it and and it affects every aspect of our lives. you know, I I you know, there we've always said the professional societies like the NWA, AGU, and AMS, but there's only so much that they can do in that space. And so having their organization has really been a you know a nice step forward to sort of really show the importance of weather and climate information to the broader society. Okay, well let's talk about the future of the Weather Enterprise and what you so I kinda wanna look down the road and what you foresee as the future of communication and the science. And then also in a dream world, what you would love to see, like some real great goals. Well, the future is here as far as AI and machine learning. As you well know, in twenty twenty five, I think the Google Deep Mind model was one of the most successful models for hurricane forecasting. And I know our our colleagues out at the National Hurricane Center have access to it because I recently interviewed the Mike Brennan, the head of the National Hurricane Center for Weather Geeks, and we were talking about that. So it's gonna be interesting to watch how AI and machine learning techniques continue to sort of improve. not only our modeling, numerical water modeling capacity, but also our observational capacity. even not just at the global scale with the European model of the GFS, there's something called warn on forecast system now that the National Severe Storms Lab has been evaluating and it's involving some machine learning and other types of technologies where essentially they can tell you two hours from now that a this town's going to be hit with a tornado. Like, you know, the the lead time on tornadoes, average lead time has been around 14 or 15 minutes. But there are there's there are studies out there now that show this warn on forecast system has allowed, you know, the weather service to call emergency managers two hours from now and say, hey, that town's gonna get hit. I think there's a really interesting question around that because then this gets at the other part of the future, which is continuingly growing the social and behavioral and communication sort of connections to the technology. So for example, We can give you two hours warning that a tornado is going to hit your town, but should we? Now I know that's a sounds controversial, what I just asked. What I really mean by that is, okay, imagine say, hey, blah, blah, blah, Georgia, you're gonna get a hit with a tornado in two hours. Are people gonna hear that and start acting? Or are they gonna say, okay, two hours, I still got time to run to the grocery store and pick up some eggs and milk? So is it going to sort of desensitize our sense of urgency? Now, I think there are some studies on this that suggest that that two-hour warning is definitely valuable for hospitals and schools and nursing homes and things of that nature, but it's not clear where the sweet spot is for the individual person in the public, where where that sort of natural sweet spot is between complacency and urgency. That's a really tough question. question because it feels a little like gatekeeping, you know, when you have information like that, but you're not telling people. And then does that erode trust if they find out that you knew and you didn't say anything? Yeah, I don't and again, I don't think that's going on in nowhere in the National Weather Service. They're still more very much in the evaluative phase of these capacities. But I think there will need to be studies to sort of understand how to properly communicate to the public. when we are able to reliably give you two hour warnings or whatever we can give you. I mean, we we give you seven hour, seven day warnings now for hurricanes. We can tell you with pretty good accuracy, there's still some error, but seven, five days out now, we have a pretty good idea where a hurricane's gonna make landfall. I mean, if you just look at the trends in the error and track forecast, five day forecasts today are probably as good as three day forecasts were 30 or 40 years ago. So we're narrowing that gap. And we still see a range of decision making with that information. And you're right, we can't tell people what to do. I was a co-author on a study for the National Academies recently where we we went into the Gulf regions during after 2020 and 2021 seasons. And we you know, we still find that people have these benchmarks in their mouth. Well, I stud I survived the hurricane X in 1970, so I'll I'm not leaving or whatever. And so people are basing their decisions on these benchmark storms or events that may not be representative of today or next year's storms or next 10 year storms because of changes. All right. Well, Marshall, what's next for you? Are you running for office? Is what I want to know. No, I I'm sure it's been suggested. Of course. Yeah. No, I, you I'm like I said right now, I'm an associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia and I still lead University of Georgia's atmospheric sciences program. I I still host the weather channels, Weather Geeks, and the Write for Forbes. and you know, I want to do those things a little bit longer. get my son, kid, my daughter just graduated from college and my son's a couple of years away. You know, I get offers all the time to go do a lot of other things at the highest levels, both in academia and in the federal government. And and, you know, I've I I have I'm I'm blessed to have the skill set and the reputation that people feel that I can do those things. And at some point I may take some of them up. But right now, you know, I'm right where I want to be because I I like the voice and access that I have and what I'm doing. Gwinnett County, where the good Korean barbecue is. That's my old stomping ground. I used to live there. Yeah, there's quite my and my daughter loves Korean barbecue. There's quite a bit. Yes, there is. Well, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, thank you so much for all of this today. This is an awesome conversation. I had a blast. I feel like we could talk for hours, but alas, we'll just have to have you back on the show at some point. Happy to do it. Thank you to Dr. Marshall Shepherd for joining me on this episode of Atmosphere. Make sure you check out his podcast, Weather Geeks. It's linked in the show notes. Also, if you haven't been reading his Forbes articles, you're missing out. He hits some great topics and they are relatively quick reads that anybody can learn from. If you have questions about today's show or weather in general, you can always find me on social media. On Facebook, I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie, and on Instagram, just search Atmosphere Podcast. If you want to hear more about my takeaways from every interview I do, subscribe to my Substack. Just go to Substack and search Atmosphere or Emily Gracie. And if you're looking for even more weather content, check out Weekly Weather Brief. It's a podcast I do with my friend and fellow meteorologist Karen Jerriman. It's only 10 minutes and it comes out every Friday. You can find it on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. It gives you everything you need to know before you head into the weekend. It's also linked in the show notes. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Thanks for taking the time to slow down, stay curious, and explore the atmosphere.