A view of the United States map with various weather systems shown.

Staffing cuts push NOAA to buy weather data from private balloon and drone firms

Facing a dwindling federal balloon network, the National Weather Service began purchasing high-altitude observations from startups this year to shore up forecasts ahead of a busy hurricane season.

Meg Wilcox reports for Inside Climate News.

In short:

Trump-era reductions left at least a dozen NWS launch sites idle, including Kotzebue, Alaska, forcing a pause in routine radiosonde flights.
WindBorne Systems and other venture-backed firms now sell balloon, buoy and drone measurements to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under a “data-as-a-service” model that lets them keep the hardware.
Former NOAA officials warn that substituting private data for the agency’s own could fracture the historical climate record and leave taxpayers captive to proprietary fees.

Key quote:

“There’s a contradictory nature to what this administration is doing, advocating for private sector delivery of data and then removing a third of the weather service. Who’s going to manage these programs and make sure they’re effective?”

— Rick Spinrad, NOAA administrator during the Biden administration

Why this matters:

Weather data are the foundation of storm warnings, aviation safety, and climate science. And carbon-driven warming trends are measured against NOAA’s radiosonde archive, built balloon by balloon since the 1930s. If cost-cutting turns that public asset into a pay-per-view feed, emergency managers, pilots, and farmers could face blind spots just as ocean temperatures set new records and rapid-fire hurricanes threaten coastal hospitals. Relying on venture-capital start-ups also introduces business risk: A bankruptcy, software change, or data embargo could arrive faster than a storm front.

Learn more: Trump’s government cuts disrupt NOAA forecasts and data collection

insideclimatenews.org

Credit: Hubert Neufeld/Unsplash

Black carbon spewing from ships is a major climate threat in the Arctic

A coalition of nations and environmental groups is lobbying the International Maritime Organization to create regulations around black carbon, or soot, that spews from ships and blankets parts of glaciers and snow.

Read the Full Article on

apnews.com

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