The devastating tornado that hit the Oklahoma City suburbs on Monday has rightly taken up a lot of media oxygen over the last few days. The attention means faculty members in geography John Knox and especially current president of the American Meteorological Society J. Marshall Shepherd have been on call, non-stop. A sampling for Shepherd alone, just in the past two days:
Huffpost Live, XM Sirius B. Smith Show
NPR Science Friday on Friday.
Also quoted in following articles by Time, USA Today, etc.
http://science.time.com/2013/05/21/tornado/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/05/21/tornado-warning-safety/2348069/
The storm, its aftermath, sources and portents for the future hold a great deal of mystery that our faculty members help the public unravel. There remains a great amount of misinformation and perhaps willful denial about correlations between extreme weather events and climate change. Kudos and thanks to Shepherd and Knox on their work, the trust in which allows them to wade into contentious public debates with confidence and authority.