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OU researchers organize unique sessions for the American Meteorological Society's Annual Meeting

NORMAN, Okla. – Researchers, scientists and students from the University of Oklahoma will be principal presenters in more than 60 sessions at the 90th Annual American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Atlanta Jan. 17 to 21.

"We are excited to have such great representation from OU at this year's AMS conference," said John Snow, dean of the OU College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences. "While many think of OU as purely a 'weather school,' I am proud to point to presentations on climate change, new scientific partnerships, social sciences' role in weather research and wind energy. The range of topics being presented shows the tremendous scientific, engineering and social science talent at the University of Oklahoma and is indicative of the high quality of our meteorology and related programs."

One group of OU researchers has organized a session that is unique to an AMS meeting. Titled "Ways of Knowing: Traditional Knowledge as Key Insight for Dealing with Environmental Change," the session, which includes anthropologists, geographers and Native scholars, some of whom are coming from Finnish Lapland, New Zealand, Brazil and Canada, is part of the Fifth Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research. The session is intended to increase awareness of real-life experiences with and adaptations to climate change around the world and to explore the role social science can play in climate-change research.

"This session will explore the role of 'non-scientific' forms of knowledge as part of the repertoire of insight needed to deal with environmental changes, including climate change, and it builds upon an American Meteorological Society Town Hall Meeting in 2009 on 'Climate Change, Indigenous Communities in the United States, and AMS: Needs and Opportunities,'" said Randy Peppler, session co-organizer and associate director of the OU and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies.

Heather Lazrus, an environmental anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher for OU's Social Science Woven into Meteorology program, is the other co-organizer of the session.

Peppler and Lazrus' double session will be held in two parts from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19, and from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m., on Wednesday, Jan. 20, both in room B213 at the Georgia World Congress Center, as part of the joint session between the Fifth Symposium on Policy and Socioeconomic Research and the Second AMS Conference on International Cooperation in the Earth System Sciences and Services. Wednesday's session will conclude with a 30-minute discussion period that will allow for broader questions to be raised about inclusion of diverse voices when tackling environmental problems and considering paths forward.

A poster session within the same Symposium also will be held Monday, Jan. 18, from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. to further highlight the research related to this session.

For more information about the AMS Conference, visit http://www.ametsoc.org/MEET/annual/index.html.

On the Web:

University of Oklahoma
www.ou.edu

College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences
www.ags.ou.edu

School of Meteorology
http://weather.ou.edu

Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies
http://cimms.ou.edu/

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