It's a little known fact that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an above average job outlook for the atmospheric sciences from 2019-2029.
The field is small, but growing with broadening career opportunities. When most people think about meteorologists, they think of television or National Weather Service meteorologists, but the reality is that most of our students work in other areas.
As examples of emerging opportunities, Amazon currently has 5 weather-related openings to expand their group of weather professionals. These openings are:
- Principal HPC Solutions Architect for Weather Modeling, AWS: Craft cloud-based weather and climate modeling solutions for AWS customers.
- Weather Research Scientist, Modeling and Optimization: Model weather’s impact on various aspects of Amazon's business, supply chain, and transportation network.
- Software Development Engineer, Modeling and Optimization: Build software systems that can help Amazon predict and manage the impact of weather on its businesses.
- Software development Engineer, Prime Air (drones): Development and deploy weather observation and forecasting services for drone delivery, and implementation of weather models into our flight simulator.
- Senior Applied Scientist, AWS: Build forecasting models to help manage our global renewable energy and storage resources using weather data as input.
These openings illustrate the importance meteorological, forecasting, data science, programming, and instrumentation skills. Additionally, candidates must have strong verbal and written communication skills and the ability to work with and across a variety of internal and external teams at Amazon.
I expect more positions like these to be coming down the pike. Numerical modeling and machine learning are transforming forecast capabilities and services in ways that will greatly benefit private industry. Over the past several years, we have passed a tipping point where the usefulness and reliability of forecasting systems can make this happen. Of my 5 most recent PhD students, three are working in the private sector. This is an exciting transformation for students in or interested in the atmospheric sciences.
10k jobs in the entire country is not alot of jobs. I have heard that there are more graduates than jobs and you need a masters degree to have a good chance at landing a job. Meterology has been my hobby for 20 years it would be my dream job but I think I'll stick with my electrician job which requires no education and pays about the same. My mom has 3 degrees and she is minimum wage janitor, I have 2 degrees neither of which I'm using so in alot of cases getting a degree doesn't improve you're life it just saddles you with debt. You also have to be very good at math and chemistry to be a meteorologist, I'm alright at math but 4 calculus classes and differential equations is probably more than most people can handle.
ReplyDeleteIt's still not great... the jobs you've pointed out either require a masters degree or mutliple years of experience. Bachelor's in atmos feels a little useless if you don't land highly competitive government job or stay in academia.
ReplyDeleteMost available jobs are heavily oriented towards either programming or data analytics and most atmos programs have not caught up to this change.
DeleteSome jobs require an MS or PhD with the ability to do highly technical work. This is the case for many of these atmos-related tech jobs. The higher degrees in atmospheric sciences open up a broader array of employment opportunities and greater earning potential.
Delete