The COVID-19 Shutdown is Making Weather Prediction More Difficult
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AnonymousCoward:
The COVID-19 shutdown is making weather prediction more difficult:
The World Meteorological Organization's Global Observing System -- one third of the WMO's overarching World Weather Watch program -- was established in 1963 and provides a variety of atmosphere and ocean surface measurements to the WMO's 193 member states. These measurements are gathered from satellite and ground-based observation platforms, as well as commercial aircraft. They're then disseminated via the WMO's Global Telecommunication System (GTS) before being processed by the Global Data-processing and Forecasting System (GDPFS).
The ground and satellite components of that system are largely automated and generally immune to at least the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lars Peter Riishojgaard, Director, Earth System Branch in WMO's Infrastructure Department believes that the impact of losing those aerial observations will still be "relatively modest." However, he explained in a recent press release, "as the decrease in availability of aircraft weather observations continues and expands, we may expect a gradual decrease in reliability of the forecasts."
[...] More immediate is the problem with the system's aircraft-based sensors; primarily that they're no longer in the sky, collecting vital ambient temperature, wind speed and direction readings. Aircraft rely on the Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay program (AMDAR) to collect the necessary data using onboard sensors, process and transmit it to relay stations on the ground via radio or satellite link.
[...] "As of March 31, the daily output of meteorological data from U.S. commercial aircraft has decreased to approximately half of normal levels," the NOAA rep continued. They were also quick to point out that "even though a decrease in this critical data will possibly negatively impact forecast model skill, it does not necessarily translate into a reduction in forecast accuracy since National Weather Service meteorologists use an entire suite of observations and guidance to produce an actual forecast."
[...] Thankfully, meteorologists won't be flying completely blind with so many airlines effectively out of commission. The ECMWF began pulling wind data from the Aeolus satellite in January. As for the NOAA, "while the automated weather reports from commercial aircraft provide exceptionally valuable data for forecast models, we also collect billions of Earth observations from other sources that feed into our models, such as weather balloons, surface weather observation network, radar, satellites and buoys," the spokesperson told Engadget. "Additionally, NOAA will soon be using COSMIC-2 GPS radio occultation satellite data to further increase observations throughout the depth of the tropical atmosphere."
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