Private companies are now collecting weather data for NOAA
In contrast, WindBorne balloons can collect and distribute data from remote areas. This would make them more compatible, especially for monitoring atmospheric rivers that give heavy rainfall to coastal areas, Glakin said. “I want to see them in the set of view systems.”
Dean said the company is deploying about 100 balloons from six launch sites worldwide, part of 92 launch -runs by NOAA, but aims to expand 10,000 global balloons over the next five years.
Curtis Marshall, NWS Business Data Program Manager, wrote in an email: Windborne data is less expensive than radio data “on each view or at each station”.
While its data is now free and free to the public, Dean said, as the company expands, it wants to return some of the information it collects for 48 hours to sell it to private buyers. This data will no longer be useful for other predictors.
Technology of Old Radiovands School is difficult to replace
Radiovands collect a vertical profile – a line from the ground to the extent that the balloon explodes – the data in the atmosphere, which is important for understanding the climate change signals. In contrast, WindBorne balloons collect thousands of data points in different altitudes in a horizontal space. Their route is to some extent that the wind blows them, while the radiors collect data in a line that is the same for each launch.
While the absence of a continuous Windborne route is not important to predict short -term air, Glackin said it can be important to understand the long -term changes in the weather, which is currently based on decades of vertical profile data collected at the same point. Windborne data will not be comparable to that historical history.
“We have a very clean climate history that lets us talk about changing the weather,” he said. “If all the radios are eliminated tomorrow, one can understand what has changed, and what should be attributed to technology to what really happened in the atmosphere.”
Coleman, a meteorology that previously worked on NOAA, There are ways to move to new tools, but NWS requires leading planning to maintain a fixed data record.
Marshall wrote: NWS does not move to replace radios – however -, but in the “early stages” it is planning for a new set of upper atmospheric observation systems that offer data “significantly similar to the Federal Radio Network.”
New viewing systems come from commercial balloons, drones and aircraft and “our federal balloon supplement”.
However, Austin Tendel, the founder of the wizard, a Windborne competitor, said that NOAA officials are increasingly asking him, “What can be a real replacement for Radio.”
“It has been a passionate change recently and is very much in the conversation,” he said.
The head of Windborne refused to respond when he was asked if he had similar conversations.
NOAA’s collaboration with Windborne ‘can be completely up and top [meaning an add-on rather than a replacement]But people do not have much confidence in a broader strategy for NOAA Weather Enterprise, based on whatever happened. “
