How long do meteorologists work

Engineering and technology. Use engineering, science and technology to design and produce goods and services. Public safety and security. Use of equipment, rules and ideas to protect people, data, property, and institutions. Transmission, broadcasting, switching, control, and operation of telecommunications systems.

Personnel and human resources. Moving people or goods by air, rail, sea, or road. Law and government. How our laws and courts work. Government rules and regulations, and the political system. Sociology and anthropology. Skills Skills can be improved through training or experience. Using scientific rules and methods to solve problems. Reading comprehension. Active learning. Being able to use what you have learnt to solve problems now and again in the future.

Writing things for co-workers or customers. Active listening. Listening to others, not interrupting, and asking good questions. Critical thinking. Thinking about the pros and cons of different ways to solve a problem. Complex problem solving. Noticing a problem and figuring out the best way to solve it. Judgment and decision making. Figuring out the pros and cons of different options and choosing the best one.

Keeping track of how well work is progressing so you can make changes or improvements. Systems analysis. Time management. Managing your own and other peoples' time to get work done. Learning strategies.

Figuring out the best way to teach or learn something new. Coordination with others. Being adaptable and coordinating work with other people.

Systems evaluation. Measuring how well a system is working and how to improve it. Social perceptiveness. Understanding why people react the way they do. Serving others. Talking people into changing their minds or their behaviour.

Management of personnel resources. Abilities Workers use these physical and mental abilities. Written comprehension. Oral comprehension. Listen to and understand what people say.

Oral expression. Written expression. Write in a way that people can understand. Deductive reasoning. Use general rules to find answers or solve problems logically.

Inductive reasoning. Use lots of detailed information to come up with answers or make general rules. Speech clarity. Speak clearly so others can understand you. Flexibility of closure. See a pattern a figure, object, word, or sound hidden in other distracting material. Near vision. See details that are up-close within a few feet. Problem spotting. Come up with different ways of grouping things. Sorting or ordering. Choose the right maths method or formula to solve a problem.

Working with numbers. Come up with a number of ideas about a topic, even if the ideas aren't very good. Far vision. Selective attention. Pay attention to something without being distracted. Speech recognition. Identify and understand the speech of another person. Come up with unusual or clever ideas, or creative ways to solve a problem.

Colour discrimination. Notice differences between colours, including shades of colour and brightness. Activities These are kinds of activities workers regularly do in this job.

Keeping your knowledge up-to-date. Keeping up-to-date with technology and new ideas. Collecting and organising information. Communicating with the public. Giving information to the public, business or government by telephone, in writing, or in person. Making sense of information and ideas. Looking at, working with, and understanding data or information.

Researching and investigating. Looking for, getting and understanding different kinds of information. Looking for changes over time. Explaining things to people. Helping people to understand and use information. Making decisions and solving problems. Some forecasters prepare long-range outlooks to predict whether temperatures and precipitation levels will be above or below average in a particular month or season.

These workers become familiar with general weather patterns, atmospheric predictability, precipitation, and forecasting techniques. Some people with an atmospheric science background may become professors or postsecondary teachers. Atmospheric scientists, including meteorologists held about 10, jobs in The largest employers of atmospheric scientists, including meteorologists were as follows:. In the federal government, most atmospheric scientists work as weather forecasters with the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA in weather stations throughout the United States—at airports, in or near cities, and in isolated and remote areas.

In smaller stations, they often work alone; in larger ones, they work as part of a team. In addition, hundreds of members of the Armed Forces are involved in atmospheric science. Atmospheric scientists involved in professional, scientific, and technical services or research often work in offices and laboratories.

Some may travel frequently to collect data in the field and to observe weather events, such as tornadoes, up close. They also observe actual weather conditions from the ground or from an aircraft. Broadcast meteorologists present their reports to the general public from television and radio studios.

They also may broadcast from outdoor locations to tell audiences about current weather conditions. Atmospheric scientists who work in private industry may have to travel to meet with clients or to gather information in the field.

For example, forensic meteorologists may need to collect information from the scene of an accident as part of their investigation. Most atmospheric scientists work full time. Weather conditions can change quickly, so weather forecasters need to continuously monitor conditions. Many, especially entry-level staff at field stations, work rotating shifts to ensure staff coverage for all 24 hours in a day.

For this reason, they may work nights, weekends, and holidays. In addition, they may work extended hours during severe weather, such as hurricanes. Some work more than 40 hours per week. Other atmospheric scientists have a standard workweek, although researchers may work nights and weekends on particular projects. Prospective meteorologists usually take courses outside of the typical atmospheric sciences field.

Course requirements, in addition to courses in meteorology and atmospheric science, usually include advanced courses in physics and mathematics.

Classes in computer programming are important because many atmospheric scientists have to write and edit the computer software programs that produce forecasts. Coursework in remote sensing of the environment, by radar or satellite, may be required. In addition to advanced meteorological coursework, graduate students take courses in other disciplines, such as oceanography and geophysics.

Analytical skills. Atmospheric scientists must be able to focus for many hours, working with computer models and massive amounts of data to prepare analyses on their findings. Communication skills. Atmospheric scientists need to be able to write and speak clearly so that their knowledge about the weather can be used effectively by communities and individuals. Critical-thinking skills. Atmospheric scientists need to be able to analyze the results of their computer models and forecasts to determine the most likely outcome.

Math skills. Atmospheric scientists use calculus, statistics, and other advanced topics in mathematics to develop models used to forecast the weather. They also use mathematical calculations to study the relationship between properties of the atmosphere, such as how changes in air pressure may affect air temperature.

Atmospheric scientists and meteorologists who find employment in the National Weather Service will need to take training when they begin employment to be able to use equipment needed to issue warnings of severe weather. The National Weather Service offers opportunities for students through internship, fellowship, volunteer, and scholarship programs.

Note: All Occupations includes all occupations in the U. Source: U. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less.

In May , the median annual wages for atmospheric scientists, including meteorologists in the top industries in which they worked were as follows:. Many, especially entry-level staff at field stations, work rotating shifts to ensure staff coverage for all 24 hours in a day, and they may work on nights, weekends, and holidays. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program. New types of computer models have vastly improved the accuracy of forecasts and allowed atmospheric scientists to tailor forecasts to specific purposes.

This should maintain, and perhaps increase, the need for atmospheric scientists working in private industry as businesses demand more specialized weather information. Businesses increasingly rely on just-in-time delivery to avoid the expenses incurred by traditional inventory management methods.

Severe weather can interrupt ground or air transportation and delay inventory delivery. Businesses have begun to maintain forecasting teams around the clock to advise delivery personnel, and this availability helps them stay on schedule.

In addition, severe weather patterns have become widely recognizable, and industries have become increasingly concerned about their impact, which will create demand for work in atmospheric science. As utility companies continue to adopt wind and solar power, they must depend more heavily on weather forecasting to arrange for buying and selling power. This should lead to increased reliance on atmospheric scientists employed in firms in professional, scientific, and technical services to help utilities know when they can sell their excess power, and when they will need to buy.

These estimates are available for the nation as a whole, for individual states, and for metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas. The link s below go to OEWS data maps for employment and wages by state and area.

All state projections data are available at www. Information on this site allows projected employment growth for an occupation to be compared among states or to be compared within one state. CareerOneStop includes hundreds of occupational profiles with data available by state and metro area. There are links in the left-hand side menu to compare occupational employment by state and occupational wages by local area or metro area.

There is also a salary info tool to search for wages by zip code. Synoptic meteorologists gather and interpret data in order to forecast weather. Often they are concerned with the weather in a specific geographic area. They use instruments to measure the temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, rainfall, and air quality.

Some meteorologists use photographs and data from satellites to predict the weather. Usually they feed their information into a computer. In return, they receive charts, maps, and diagrams that help them to predict the weather in their locale. Some meteorologists who are involved in forecasting are employed in metropolitan areas near large airports.

Others run weather stations in remote areas throughout the world. A number of them work in planes and on ships. Climatologists are meteorologists who are interested in long-term changes in the weather. Their goal is to predict slow changes in the climate that might affect food production or ocean temperatures.

They may study fossils and tree rings to find out what the weather was like many hundreds of years ago. Some branches of meteorology deal with other aspects of the atmosphere. Physical meteorologists, for example, study the chemistry of the atmosphere or the way radio waves pass through it in different kinds of weather.

Their research may lead to improved long-distance communication. Armed services personnel may be trained on the job to gather and process data. To get a job outside the armed services, however, candidates need a bachelor's degree.