In the past 20 years, there have been 241 separate weather and climate disasters costing more than … [+]
As students head back to school and explore career paths, or are on the precipice looking for jobs, something to seriously consider is the growing demand of weather-related careers— without being a meteorologist. The convergence of extreme weather increasingly disrupting operations and risking safety, along with the availability of big data and advanced computing power, creates a high demand for people to design and deploy innovative digital solutions.
In the past 20 years, there have been 241 separate weather and climate disasters costing more than $1 billion each and we are continuing to see that trend continue with this year’s extreme flooding events, drought, and intense heat waves. The importance of providing real-time, hyper-relevant weather information is a key factor in predicting and managing these extreme weather events, but these jobs aren’t just for meteorologists.
The current job market for meteorologists is quite competitive, as U.S. colleges are seeing almost twice as many meteorology graduates as there are entry-level positions. Recent research suggests that it is becoming more challenging for young meteorologists to find a traditional meteorology job, but the growth in weather-related, technology jobs is increasing in the private and public sector. So fast, that it is more of a challenge to fill skilled data science and engineering positions than it is to fill a forecasting position.
The weather industry employs computer scientists, programmers, and app developers to use technology to make detailed, complex weather information available for everyone from professionals to the public, helping us all be more aware of the weather around us. In fact, NOAA is looking to increase its operating budget by 20% this next year, with most of the additional funding allocated to climate research and supercomputing.
The National Weather Service is one of the largest employers of meteorologists, and of its more than 4,000 employees, only approximately half of them are meteorologists. The other 2,000 employees work in a variety of careers, including many technical positions like information technology specialists and electronics technicians who work with computers, servers, telephones, radio systems, automated surface observing systems, radars, or other electronic equipment to provide critical support to the meteorologists and weather-related programs. Other technical staff maintain web sites, develop software, and write computer programs.
In the private weather sector, jobs for engineers, software developers, app developers and other technical positions also continue to grow, as the business of weather is not just there to protect lives and property anymore, although that will always be a key function of the industry. Businesses are engaging enterprise weather services to help make agile, confident business decisions using a variety of analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based systems to forecast the weather and understand the business impact.
According to NOAA, 76%of global organizations are planning to increase or maintain their investments in big data over the next several years. These companies haven’t traditionally used weather data for decision making in the past but are now finding opportunities to increase revenue and reduce costs with this data. For example, by combining weather data with purchasing trends and consumer demand data, a grocery chain learned that even a small change in temperature can result in a significant shift in what people buy, and as a result improved its revenues by modeling this impact and managing inventory accordingly. Recently, I have written several articles that highlight the use of AI in weather risk management and how weather analytics impacts climate change roadmaps. This high-level of intelligence requires blended skills sets of meteorologists who can understand, model, and interpret the data and data engineers who can design, process, and deliver the insights though accessible and agile methods.
So, if you are curious about weather and interested in helping to build innovative technology that delivers critical insights about the atmospheric forces that shape our weather and climate, this may be the industry for you.
