Episode 2: Career Liz: IÕm Liz Carter, a science communicator from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and this is Alaska Voices, a place where community members, friends, and scientists can share stories and place-based knowledge in order to build a better tomorrow for Alaskans and the world. [music] Liz: This miniseries is an interview style show that explores the life and career thus far of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and PolicyÕs climate specialist Rick Thoman. During theseÊ four episodes we will examine how Rick found his way to Alaska, how his career has grown and changed over the last 40 years, some major impacts and successes, and how his career can teach others about how to best work within Alaskan communities.Ê Liz: So, last episode we really focused on the origin of your career, the origin of your time in Alaska. And this episode IÕm hoping to really get at the bulk of your career so far. Can we start by talking a bit about the move to Alaska? You were hired by the Weather Service in 1988 and assigned to Nome. IÕm really interested to hear what you were working on, what your life there was like? Rick: The job that I was doing at Nome was very different from what IÕd been doing the previous five years, going from a weather forecaster to a weather observer. So, that was a big change. Certainly going from State College, Pennsylvania with probably 40,000 students at Penn State at that time to a town of a few thousand in rural Alaska was quite the change. I actually knew nothing about Nome other than where it was on a map when I got the job offerÉBut the job offer was for Nome, and it didnÕt take very much thought to decide to accept it. Once I got there, I had to learn a whole new skill set. A lot of what I knew was not immediately applicable. Obviously, to some extent, but not immediately. I had a whole new skillset to learn. Liz: Are there any particular moments from your time in Nome that really stuck with you? Rick: A little thing that sticks with me to this day, in the first weeks that I was in Nome, I learned that whatÕs a nice weather day in Nome, a day when the sun is shining. DidnÕt make the slightest difference what the temperature was, didnÕt make the slightest difference what the wind was, if the sun was out, it was a nice day. And why is that important 35 years later, I think that expresses an attitude about the environment for the people that live in the region but also was a very early introduction for me to whatÕs important to people, not whatÕs important in the weather forecast, not what does the forecast office in Fairbanks think is important, but what are people who are living here thinking is important. Liz: Could you expand on how experiences like this changed your approach to working in Alaska? Rick: I can tell a funny story. July of 1989 was extremely cloudy and rainy in Nome and western Alaska, a lot of days with rain and just solid gray skies. And I was working an evening shift, it was later in the month. I was working a 4 to midnight shift, IÕd come in. And one of the first duties of that shift is to write the Nome and vicinity forecast to go out on the teletype and weather radio stations. And I sit down to do that and lo, the clouds part and the sun is shining brightly. And the forecast for the southern Seward Peninsula and eastern Norton Sound out of Fairbanks was tonight cloudy. So, I put out the forecast that said ÒSunshine this evening and cloudy after midnightÓ or something like that. And it had been less than 10 minutes is my memory since I sent that out, when the phone rings and itÕs the forecaster from Fairbanks saying Òwhy did you put sunny this evening in the forecast, itÕs gonna be cloudy?Ó ItÕs like trying to explain to him, itÕs been incredibly cloudy here all month, people are noticing that itÕs blue sky right now, the sun is brightly shining. People are very excited about that. He said Òwell itÕs gonna cloud upÓ and that was the end of that conversation. And it did cloud up over night, but it was a glorious evening made more glorious by the fact it had been so cloudy. ItÕs a good example, I think, of IÕm sitting there, IÕm looking at the sun on the hills, mightÕve even been a phone call asking how long this sunshineÕs supposed to last, kinda thing. The value of that sensitivity not just to whatÕs happening but why itÕs important in context. Liz: If you were to sum up what you learned from your time in Nome, are there any particular takeaways? Rick: Nome was my very first lesson in listening to what's important to people as far as weather and climate impacts and the kinds of information that they need. It certainly reinforced, or didnÕt reinforce because I didnÕt know the extent, but I learned just how different rural Alaska is from urban Alaska, the cities, even the rail belt. Different in the sense of whatÕs the resources available, whatÕs important, whatÕs less important. ThatÕs certainly a major lesson that has stuck with me my entire career.Ê Liz: In 1990, you would move to Fairbanks, where you would continue working for the National Weather Service until you retired in 2018. You worked as a General Forecaster, a Lead Forecaster, the Climate Focal Point, and Climate Sciences and Services Manager. Could we talk a bit about the challenges you faced over the course of your 30 year career with the weather service? Rick: So, yÕknow, from the forecast standpoint, a big challenge for the entire time I was a forecaster was just the size of the area. So, you had, for much of the first ten years that I was here, we were issuing forecasts for the Tanana Valley Zone which went from the Alaska-Canada border southeast of Northway all the way to Tanana, including the whole of the north side of the Alaska Range. Well, the weather in there is wholly different and you get 3 sentence fragments to describe the weather. How do you do that? Similarly, on the coast. We had much better idea of what was going to happen than we had mechanism to tell people. How to work around that in the areas on the coast where you had hub communities and weather service staff, it was normal during a big event to call the rural offices and say hereÕs what weÕre thinking for Nome and the area served by the Nome hub. So, that was a mechanism to help get more refined forecasts at least so that the folks at the weather service offices understood that, then we hoped they would be able to convey that out to their region.Ê Liz: And how does your work at the Weather Service transition into working with ACCAP? Rick: ACCAP was started in about 2006 and because I was the Climate Focal Point for the Fairbanks office, I very early on by 2007 was coordinating with themÉ A lot of that was contributing information or articles to the newsletter that ACCAP produced at the time. I provided one of the first webinars that ACCAP did, when they started the webinar series, I was an early contributor to that. So, I had been working with ACCAP for a long time before I retired. Liz: The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, or ACCAPÕs, webinars focus on providing up-to-date and locally to regionally relevant information to Alaskans about the changing climate and how it impacts day-to-day life. RickÕs contributions have included monthly climate briefings, as well as special annual reviews on things like spring green up and break up.Ê Liz: Rick, you shifted into a new role as Climate Sciences and Services Director at the National Weather Service, where one of your main goals was to increase visibility for Alaska in the weather service. How did this new position impact your collaborations with ACCAP?Ê Rick: So I met with SarahÉand we very quickly settled on a project that I could help ACCAP with. In the early days of ACCAP they had developed this weather and climate highlights tool, and by 2013 it had kind of sat fallow for 2 or 3 years. So Sarah suggested, if you could get that up to date, back-populate it from when we stopped regularly doing it, and then keep it going going forward, that would be a big help. And I said, keeping abreast of whatÕs happening is one of the things this job is supposed to do. So, that sounds like something I can do. So, I had been closely working with ACCAP on that and other things like the newsletter, like providing webinars on occasion, especially intensely from 2013 to 18. And when I let Sarah know I was planning on retiring, she said well if you want a job in retirement, yÕknow weÕd love to have you. And one thing led to another and now weÕre doing this interview.Ê [outro music] Liz: Alaska Voices is a place for communities to connect through conversation.Ê This mini series was created by Liz Carter, an Alaska Fellow at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. ACCAP is housed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks,Ê International Arctic Research Center and is one of several Climate Adaptation Partnerships teams funded by the NOAA Climate Program Office. ACCAP works to build healthy and thriving Alaska communities, economies and ecosystems in a changing climate.Ê This project was supported by the Alaska Voices team.. If you are interested in more conversations or information, please visit Alaska Voices.org.