What should meteorology students learn in school to get hired?
Asked
What can students be doing in school to prepare for a career in meteorology?
“I think one of the best things students can do today to prepare for a career in meteorology is to learn how to code.”
Giver Jenny Kafka, a private-sector meteorologist, answers in full below.
Other Givers: what would you add, or what was different for you?
Students: what are you learning now, or what’s your next question?
1 reply
- JKJenny KafkaGiver
I think one of the best things students can do today to prepare for a career in meteorology is to learn how to code. Most private sector meteorology jobs or meteorology-adjacent jobs now require some level of technical skill.
And I don’t mean simply learning how to prompt an AI to generate all your code for you. AI can absolutely help you build things faster, but I think it is still critical to understand basic programming principles. What is a for loop? What is a class? What is an if statement?
Python is free and relatively easy to install. Build a simple project that pulls weather data from an API such as Open-Meteo. Learn how to process the data, how to visualize the data, and eventually automate a workflow. The project doesn’t need to be complex; the value is in learning how all the code pieces fit together. And in the future, you’ll be able to judge whether the code AI produces is good, wrong, or doing something you didn’t intend.
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