Weather

[Griz882]

“The thing about weather balloons is that they give you information you can’t get any other way,” said D. James Baker, a former NOAA chief during the Clinton administration. He had to cut spending in the agency during his tenure but he said he refused to cut observations such as weather balloons. “It’s an absolutely essential piece of the forecasting system.”

This isn't about making everything about politics, but rather how everyday things nearly all Americans depend upon (to varying degrees) are in jeopardy due to the manner in which needed savings are being found.*


*see, two things can be true at the same time

This is not a political question, but a technical one asked because I don’t know the answer - technology has clearly improved since the Clinton administration. Are satellites and ground based systems now able to realistically and accurately replace balloons?

 

[Gatordev]

We’ve had some amazing swings in temp forecasts recently, with the boundary between warm and cold air bouncing around in their models (I assume).

The fundamental problem is in giving a point estimate to what really should be a probability distribution. A more honest way would be to continually provide probabilities for VFR, IFR, and low IFR, but I guess that would be a struggle for people to make decisions based on that.

It's not temperature swings, as this isn't a new problem. It's that the process is too iterative for certain airports. It tries to change it's mind too fast when it should just let it ride for longer.

The GFA product does something similar to what you're describing. This replaced the FA (Area Forecast) product. But it suffers from a similar problem, or a lot of times, won't match what the actual TAF says. For area planning, the GFA product can be useful, but when you're having to make legally based weather calls, it's not refined enough, which as you said, can be a struggle to be useful.

 

[taxi1]

Are satellites and ground based systems now able to realistically and accurately replace balloons?

I think they still need that vertical atmosphere profile that has to be measured in situ to chart out atmospheric instability and stuff. The balloons also measure more accurately and take at least one additional measurement (humidity), crucial to determining instability, than the instrumented planes.

 

[sevenhelmet]

If we can’t afford weather balloons anymore, we sure as shit can’t afford radar and satellites.