Your right, and it can also be variable for a meteorologist, because different weather jobs have different life styles. A forecaster at the NWS or a private firm will do shift work, often times weekend/overnight/holiday. All you do is show up and forecast for 8 or 10 hours (from experience, accurately predicting the weather is very hard). If you do environmental consulting then it's more 9-5, plus perhaps some travel/field work, and you often times have to take work home with you. Then you have your research professors who teach and do more liesurly research work. Those jobs are nice. It costs alot of money for them too, because to attain the highest levels you need a masters or PhD on top of your BS, which can be very expensive if you have to pay for it yourself.

A person's salary, in any career field, is always a very subjective thing. You may be able to make more as an environmental consultant but you may hate the work, and would rather forecast. Unfortunately, not only is it hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison, but even then it may not tell you the whole story. Airlines pilots are (usually) paid per flight hour with additonal pay from per diem, duty rig, etc. A meteorologist is almost always paid on a fixed salary, with shift forecasters also getting an override for overtime, holiday, etc. There could be other bonuses as well. My analyses, therefore, just looked at the amount of dollars you walk away with at the end of the year. Beyond that, your "satisfaction" is going to stem from how much your enjoying your job.

I'm working part time at a mall retail store while going to school. It's a good company, good products, decent salary (would get free health benefits if I was full time). My manager makes about $65K by running the store, managing everything, and dealing with angry jackass customers. Christmass time was a stress nightmare. It's a cool, good job for a college student like me, but I wouldn't want to do it forever.

The biggest thing in the end is if you can look at your life and say your happy. My closest mentor is a super-senior 777 FO at Continental (mid 40s), and he's gotten pay cuts just like everyone else at the legacies. He typically does those long-ass flights from EWR to asian cities, and is divorced (I don't think it had to do with his being away from home), but has two great kids. He says he's loving his job and loving life.