In my last post, I said that naming winter storms made sense to me both as a convenient shorthand, and on the basis that large winter storm systems like Nemo are spawned from slow-moving mid-latitude cyclones. But as Maura Hahnenberger (@Maura_Science) pointed out to me over Twitter, it’s not as simple as I made it out to be:

@markzastrow Criteria would help, but not all winter storms are mid-latitude cyclones and not all mid-latitude cyclones are winter storms.

— Maura Hahnenberger (@Maura_Science) February 9, 2013

One thing I didn’t mention was whether or not The Weather Channel has sensible criteria for deciding which storms would qualify for a name. Or whether TWC has any standardized criteria at all. They don’t. This is the main sticking point for meteorologists who deride TWC’s unilateral decision to name storms: their criteria remain arbitrary and, perhaps even worse, proprietary.

@markzastrow Do we name all winter storms then? That’s a lot of names! Hurricane naming has standards. TWC naming of winter storms doesn’t. — Maura Hahnenberger (@Maura_Science) February 9, 2013

The issue of criteria is one that TWC recognized when it announced its plan to name winter storms…and then immediately glossed over:

In addition, the impacts from winter systems are not as simple to quantify as tropical systems where a system is named once the winds exceed a certain threshold. The process for naming a winter storm will reflect a more complete assessment of several variables that combine to produce disruptive impacts including snowfall, ice, wind and temperature. In addition, the time of day (rush hour vs. overnight) and the day of the week (weekday school and work travel vs. weekends) will be taken into consideration in the process the meteorological team will use to name storms.

In other words, there are no set criteria—it is up to a magic formula of factors that they won’t publish. Although they may have good intentions by taking these variables into account, by not standardizing them and making them known, they forfeit any accountability, claim to consistency, and risk their own credibility.

Not all is lost—this doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t set some criteria. But defining a useful set is not trivial. A common point of reference in many news stories has been the “German system of naming winter storms” at the meteorology department at the Free University of Berlin. You might wonder, “Well, if the Germans can figure out criteria on what qualifies as a named storm, then so can we!” But in fact, the German system sidesteps the issue of storm criteria entirely—not only do they give names to windstorms, they assign a name to every low and high pressure system.  Hahnenberger proposes the following compromise:

@markzastrow One idea: number all low pressure systems, and then assign names to those that meet certain criteria (wind/rain/snow). — Maura Hahnenberger (@Maura_Science) February 9, 2013

This seems quite reasonable. Despite the challenges of defining meaningful criteria, the benefits of having named storms remain evident in the wake of #Nemo. The success of The Weather Channel’s naming scheme will undoubtedly increase pressure on the National Weather Service to “get with the times” and co-opt the system next winter—and if they do, it will hopefully be with standardized criteria.

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One reason this issue of naming storms fascinates me is because it highlights the unique role of using names to foster science communication. There are many analogs in space science—for example, the anthropomorphism of NASA rovers, the push by some people to begin naming exoplanets to raise awareness. In many ways, it also echoes the debate over Pluto’s planetary status, and the struggle for planetary scientists to define a strict set of criteria for what is and isn’t a planet.

More on this later. In the meantime, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of, if not the largest interdisciplinary scientific conferences in the world, is underway this week in Boston. I’m attending for the first time, and it’s also my first time at any conference as a registered member of the press. Look for my tweets at @markzastrow and watch this space for blog updates!