Over the last several weeks, NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) has had hundreds of employees terminated. Since then, at least 14 NWS offices around the U.S. have announced that their twice-daily weather balloon launches are either suspended or reduced in number due to the reduction in workforce.
Weather balloons are typically launched from 100 upper air sites throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and the Pacific Basin. Each balloon carries a radiosonde that sends back a range of data from the upper atmosphere such as temperature, dew point, humidity, pressure, and wind speed and direction. That data is then ingested into computer models that are vital to meteorologists to forecast weather every day. If that data is missing, weather models will not be as accurate. Meteorologists in various weather-related fields use this data, so forecasts in both private and public sectors would be impacted.
Coming out of a recent period of deadly storm outbreaks with over 100 tornadoes and 1000 hail reports, meteorologists are calling for the need of MORE weather balloon launches, not less.
“Taking weather balloons offline in the heartland of the United States…will directly affect the NWS’s ability to predict severe weather, including tornado-producing thunderstorms. This could lead to more severe weather-related deaths that could have otherwise been avoided” wrote Marc Alessi of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Although there are other ways to gather upper air information such as satellites, wind profiler systems, and aircraft measurements, the vertical resolution of weather balloon data is still better. Experts argue that all of these means should be used in conjunction with weather balloon data to further improve weather forecasting models, and not as a substitute.
Unfortunately, NWS staffing may be further reduced in the future, likely impacting even more weather balloon launches across the country, and further reducing the accuracy of weather models and weather forecasts.
