In the aftermath of Hurricanes Helen and Milton, meteorologists are facing unprecedented threats and harassment, said James Marshall Shepherd, a former NASA weather scientist and current director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program. Some people got the message that scientists should be killed. Others were cursed and told to shut up. Social media posts also suggested that FEMA workers should be targeted and beaten, arrested, shot or hanged.
Climate change skeptics have long accused weather forecasters of pushing what they see as a “climate change agenda,” Shepherd said. But things took an ugly turn this month when conspiracy theorists accused scientists of covering up a government plot to manipulate the weather and send storms to Florida and North Carolina. “In the past, bullying ended up being a fringe element,” Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society, told The Associated Press. Yale Environment 360. “This last episode, it’s a little more mainstream.”
Disinformation spread primarily through social media platforms has made the already stressful task of tracking extreme weather events more difficult, he said. These campaigns can even endanger human life if people do not heed the warnings of forecasters or if beleaguered first responders are unable to do their jobs.
To combat misinformation and educate the public about weather and climate, Shepherd and other meteorologists have taken to social media themselves. But he acknowledges that not everyone will accept it. Trust in science and scientists has always been low in some communities. Shepherd said this is particularly worrisome because “extreme weather will only get worse if we don’t act and reduce carbon emissions.”
James Marshall Shepherd.
Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Yale Environment 360: Meteorologists have been harassed for years over climate change issues. Is what we’ve seen recently a continuation of that, or are we in new territory here?
James Marshall Shepherd: Climate scientists have been dealing with climate trolls, skeptics and deniers for decades. I think it’s an extension of that. The size and scale of harassment increased significantly during the two most recent hurricanes. I think some of it has to do with the fact that we’re in an election year. I remember back in 2012, people were making similar claims about Superstorm Sandy, that the government created Superstorm Sandy to disrupt the election. The difference is that in the past, bullying ended with peripheral elements. This final episode goes a bit more mainstream. That worries me.
e360: What reaction do you get when you tell people you’re a meteorologist?
shepherd: I often hear people say, “Oh, climate change is a natural phenomenon,” or “It’s just a hoax.” “You guys are doing it to get subsidies.” The ironic thing is that people would come up to me and say: “You climate scientists are full of it. “Humanity cannot change the weather and climate.” But now some of these same critics are pushing conspiracy theories, saying we are controlling hurricanes or creating storms, and attacking us when we refute them with actual science.
e360: There isn’t much logic behind most of this.
shepherd: Conspiracy theories make it easier for people to identify and adjust to what they already believe or want to believe. There’s a whole psychology to it. There are still people who do not want to accept climate change.
“There are climate scientists who have left the field. I think that was part of the bullying intent. They want to shut us down.”
e360: What have you heard from your colleagues about the emotional impact of dealing with these storms and the bullying that comes with them?
shepherd: Leading up to Helene and Milton, I had this pit in my stomach. You are forecasting or analyzing data that shows that a major storm will kill people or destroy their lives or property. That in itself takes a psychological toll. But it goes beyond that bullying and skepticism. James Spann, a very popular TV meteorologist in Birmingham, Alabama, said: “After working in stressful situations for weeks on two to three hours of sleep, you have to deal with this looming threat. It will win you over.”
e360: Did you just see the exhausted meteorologist?
shepherd: Some promising young meteorologists are leaving our field because there is too much work to do now, unlike in the past when they had to stand in front of a screen and tell us the weather every day. They’re doing social media, they’re having to file environmental reports, they’re doing a lot of things that they probably didn’t expect.
Some climate scientists have left the field after receiving threats or harassment. But I think that’s part of the harassing intent in trolling. They want to shut us down.
James Spann via Twitter
e360: Become a scientist to participate in research that expands human knowledge. Many people are drawn into politics even though they don’t want to be involved.
shepherd: I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t participate in politics. I testify before Congress and give that kind of advice to the White House. But I don’t think this is inherently political. I think others are trying to make it political. My philosophy has long been to state only the facts from a professional perspective.
e360: You are distinguishing between unintentional and intentional misinformation.
shepherd: huh. False information is life-threatening. We have seen cases where people do not heed warnings or threaten emergency responders. FEMA has had to change some of its operations due to the threats its employees are receiving.
e360: You said you are active on social media. Why is it important to you?
shepherd: The majority of people now get weather information through apps and social media rather than turning on TV news channels. It is much more difficult to track trustworthy content in these formats. Academics like me think that if we don’t get involved, the vacuum we leave will be filled by people with agendas. We need to have a vaccine against the contagious information that is out there.
“Milton went from Category 1 to Category 5 in less than 24 hours. “This is actually the fingerprint of climate change.”
e360: There are people who think the federal government, the Biden administration, is driving hurricanes to red states.
shepherd: We don’t have the technology to do that. I am a weather and climate expert. I say this clearly because I know it to be true. But now, in a society where expert knowledge is not trusted, a kind of pressure is being exerted.
e360: How good were meteorologists in predicting Hurricanes Helene and Milton?
shepherd: With Helene, we were very clear that there would be excessive rainfall in the mountains and in Georgia. But some people can’t figure it out because they don’t have a benchmark for something they haven’t experienced. These were quite anomalous events, [which] We will see more. People say, “Oh, yeah, it’s just a hurricane. “It’s going to rain a lot.” But we said there would be “excessive rainfall amounts of 20 to 30 inches” in the coming days. That’s exactly what happened.
The second Hurricane Milton caused an over-obsession. [in the media] In the storm category. Saffir-Simpson scale [which assigns numbers to the strength of hurricanes] Wind scale. Often the media focuses on it and the public tends to obsess over it. many [meteorologists] The study implored us not to focus too much on the category and wind, because the most lethal aspect of hurricanes is water, whether storm surge or inland freshwater flooding from rainfall.
Debris left behind by Hurricane Helen in Marshall, North Carolina, September 30, 2024.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
E360: You’ve talked a lot about the so-called “weather gap,” the difference between how extreme weather events affect poor people and how they affect wealthy people. Wealthy people often live in safer places and can afford to protect themselves.
shepherd: The scope is much wider than income. These extreme climate disparities really impact all vulnerable communities, including poor communities, communities of color, the very young, and the elderly, and these communities are disproportionately affected. them [often] Less resilient or adaptable. You are right. There were people in the same area who were equally exposed and affected, but they had the means to drive to Atlanta and stay in a hotel for a week.
e360: Overall, forecasts are becoming more accurate, but we still don’t know everything about hurricane intensity. Right?
shepherd: Track prediction has been greatly improved. We still have a way to go to make intensity predictions, and we know why. Orbit predictions are driven more by large-scale steering conditions in the atmosphere that the model can capture. However, intensity predictions are determined by the heat content of the ocean and, therefore, by the convection currents occurring inside the clouds. This means that data that can be applied to models is often not readily available. The energy associated with hurricane intensification is associated with something that is not controlled or explained by large-scale models.
e360: Climate change is mixing things up so quickly that it’s hard to fully keep up.
shepherd: That’s why I feel very comfortable saying this is a climate change hurricane. We know that hurricanes occur naturally. It is scheduled to take place in September and October. However, the Gulf of Mexico was unusually warm. You are facing an increasingly intense storm, which is rapidly intensifying. I think Milton went from Category 1 to Category 5 in less than 24 hours. This explosive development is actually the fingerprint of climate change.
It’s hard to see something that’s almost exactly what we said. What is even more worrying is that we are only at the beginning. If we don’t act and reduce carbon emissions, they will increase further.
