A new paper touches on a range of deep questions within and outside the atmospheric sciences, including insights into the nature of science itself, and of scientific understanding—what it means to understand a scientific problem in depth—and into the communication skills necessary to convey that understanding and to mediate collaboration across specialist disciplines. “On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding” appears in the October issue of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The author is Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre from University of Cambridge, whose work in atmospheric dynamics is well known. He also has longstanding interests in astrophysics, music, perception psychology, and biological evolution.