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Weather Caucus

Groups USA Caucuses Weather Caucus

IAEM-USA Weather Caucus

Caucus Chair

Robert Dale, CEM
weather@iaem.com

Caucus Vice Chair:
James Baugh, CEM

Board Liaison:
Erik Gaull, CEM, IAEM-USA Secretary, USASecretary@iaem.com

Staff Liaison:
Sharon Kelly, sharon@iaem.com

IAEM-USA members interested in participating in this caucus should email the caucus staff liaison and tell them how you can contribute to or learn from this committee's important work.

Purpose Statement | Caucus Goals |  History of the Caucus and Related Items
Caucus Information, Meetings, and Webinars | Continuing Education and Training Resources 
Members Only: Caucus Minutes

Group Policy

Policy Guidelines

Purpose Statement

The purpose of the IAEM-USA Weather Caucus is:

  • To reduce the impact of adverse weather by providing educational and training resources for emergency managers.

Caucus Goals

  • To provide a conduit between emergency management practitioners and the weather and climate change communities.
  • To serve as a voice for emergency managers in the climate change discussion.
  • To assist in creating policies, procedures, and best practices related to hazardous weather and climate change adaption.
  • To examine new technologies in the weather industry and evaluate their value to emergency managers.
  • To provide emergency managers with the latest social science research related to public information campaigns, alert and warning messages, etc.
  • To suggest areas of research in weather and climate change for students in emergency management related academic fields.
  • To serve as a source for meteorological and climatological subject matter experts to IAEM members and boards.

History of the Caucus and Related Items

An ad hoc committee was officially approved on Apr. 15, 2014, and effective January 2015, this committee became the original IAEM-USA Climate, Water & Weather Caucus. One of the first actions of this new committee/caucus was to develop a statement to align with the IAEM-USA Board related to “The Critical Role of Emergency Management in Climate Change Planning.” IAEM-USA strongly recommended (and continues to stress) comprehensive mitigation and adaptation strategies, integrated with existing processes such as hazard and land-use planning, as the only realistic path for resilience among individuals, communities, and our nation. In addition, IAEM-USA specifies that emergency managers have a critical role in this process and should be considered essential participants at all levels of government. “The statement specifically avoided the political controversy surrounding the topic, focusing on the potential effects and the need to address them now, using objective assessment, strategic planning, and policy development, and emphasizes that climate change” drives a range of effects, from discrete events like extreme weather to longer-term impacts that vary by location, such as drought, sea-level rise, regional energy vulnerabilities, increased wildfires, habitat modification, and emerging diseases.

In late 2021, the IAEM-USA board voted to create a new caucus called "Mitigation, Climate Resilience, and Adaption" which more directly addresses climate (longer-scale) related issues; the former "Climate, Water Weather Caucus" was renamed as the IAEM-USA Weather Caucus to allow focus on the weather (shorter-scale) related concerns. While these two caucuses have two distinct purposes, coordination and collaboration are a must and continue. Please visit their web page for more information on the "Mitigation, Climate Resilience, and Adaption" Caucus.

Caucus Information

With the restructuring of the purpose statement this year, the following are our primary projects:

  • Outdoor Warning Siren.
  • Updating the caucus web page and social media pages.
  • Supporting the IAEM Bulletin.

Future projects on the radar include:

  • Integration with related professional organizations (for example, the American Meteorological Society).
  • Addressing issues with messaging of the heat index and corresponding terms (for example, Wet Bulb Temperature).
  • Increased collaboration with the weather private sector.

The Weather Caucus holds conference calls bi-monthly, with an in-person gathering at the IAEM-USA Annual Conference.

Webinars with weather experts will be held periodically and will be open to all IAEM members. If you were unable to attend or want to rewatch any of the presentations, please click on the titles below.

  • September 2022
  • June 2022
  • March 2022

Continuing Education and Training Resources

The National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC), which is a part of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC), provides many weather, climate, and natural hazards-related training courses. Additionally, they offer training in social media usage, damage assessment, and much more. And as always with FEMA NDPC classes – these sessions are free. The list of courses is long – feel free to peruse the Training Catalog and start the process of requesting training if you see something of interest.

IAEM Annual Conference Caucus Posters

Caucus News Archive