Balloon launches cut worries US weather forecasters

With massive job cuts, the National Weather Service is eliminating or reducing vital weather balloon launches in eight northern locations, which meteorologists and former agency leaders said will degrade the accuracy of forecasts just as severe weather season kicks in.

The normally twice-daily launches of weather balloons in about 100 locations provide information that forecasters and computer models use to figure out what the weather will be and how dangerous it can get, so cutting back is a mistake, said eight different scientists, meteorologists and former top officials at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the weather service’s parent agency.  The balloons soar 100,000 feet in the air with sensors called radiosondes hanging about 20 feet below them that measure temperature, dew point, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, the Associated Press reports.

“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.”

University of Oklahoma environment professor Renee McPherson said, “This frankly is just dangerous.”

“Bad,” Ryan Maue, who was NOAA’s chief scientist at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, wrote in an email. “We should not degrade our weather system by skipping balloon launches. Not only is this embarrassing for NOAA, the cessation of weather balloon launches will worsen America’s weather forecasts.”

Launches will be eliminated in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, “due to a lack of Weather Forecast Office (WFO) staffing,” the weather service said in a notice issued late on Thursday. It also is cutting from twice daily to once daily launches in Aberdeen, South Dakota; Grand Junction, Colorado; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Gaylord, Michigan; North Platte, Nebraska and Riverton, Wyoming.

The Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency fired hundreds, likely more than 1,000, NOAA workers earlier this year. The government then sent out letters telling probationary employees let go that they will get paid, but should not report to work.

Earlier this month, the agency had announced weather balloon cuts in Albany, New York and Gray, Maine, and in late February, it ended launches in Kotzebue, Alaska. That makes 11 ann ounced sites with reduced or eliminated balloon observations, or about one out of nine launch locations which include part of the Pacific and Caribbean. Meteorologists Jeff Masters and Tomer Burg calculate that 14 of 83 US balloon sites, or 17%, are doing partial or no launches. That includes two stations that aren’t launching because of a helium shortage and a third that is hindered because of coastal erosion. “The more data we can feed into our weather models, the more accurate our forecasts, but I can’t speculate on the extent of future impacts,” weather service spokesperson Susan Buchanan said in an email.

University at Albany meteorology professor Kristen Corbosiero looked at the map of launches on Friday and said “wow, that is an empty area ... That’s not great.”

Corbosiero works in the building where the Albany weather service used to go to the roof to launch twice-daily weather balloons. It’s now down to one at night, which she said it is worrisome heading into severe weather season.

Former National Weather Service Director Elbert “Joe” Friday said the weather balloons get “the detailed lower atmospheric level of temperature and humidity that can determine whether the atmosphere is going to be hot enough to set off severe storms and how intense they might be.” All of the 10 announced reductions are in the northern part of the United States.

Weather balloons are also vital for helping forecast when and where it will rain, said Baker and another former NOAA chief, Rick Spinrad.