Slump in Air Travel Hindered Weather Forecasting, Study Shows (nytimes.com) 14
Government researchers have confirmed that the steep decline in air traffic during the coronavirus pandemic has affected the quality of weather forecasting models by sharply reducing the amount of atmospheric data routinely collected by commercial airliners. From a report: In a study, researchers showed that when a short-term forecasting model received less data on temperature, wind and humidity from aircraft, the forecast skill (the difference between predicted meteorological conditions and what actually occurred) was worse. The researchers and others had suspected this would be the case because atmospheric observations from passenger and cargo flights are among the most important data used in forecasting models. The observations are made by instruments aboard thousands of airliners, mostly based in North America and Europe, as part of a program in place for decades. They are transmitted in real time to forecasting organizations around the world, including the National Weather Service. During the first months of the pandemic, when air traffic declined by 75 percent or more worldwide, the number of observations dropped by about the same percentage.
"With every kind of observation that goes into weather models, we know they have some impact on improving accuracy overall," said one of the researchers, Stan Benjamin, a senior scientist at the Global Systems Laboratory, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Boulder, Colo. "If you've really lost a lot of observations of some kind there could be some stepping back in skill overall." While the researchers showed that the data loss contributed to making the model less accurate, NOAA said that so far it had not seen an impact on the type of short-term forecasts that companies use to make business decisions or a person might use to decide if they need to take an umbrella when going out.
"With every kind of observation that goes into weather models, we know they have some impact on improving accuracy overall," said one of the researchers, Stan Benjamin, a senior scientist at the Global Systems Laboratory, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Boulder, Colo. "If you've really lost a lot of observations of some kind there could be some stepping back in skill overall." While the researchers showed that the data loss contributed to making the model less accurate, NOAA said that so far it had not seen an impact on the type of short-term forecasts that companies use to make business decisions or a person might use to decide if they need to take an umbrella when going out.
Slump in Air Travel made things peaceful. (Score:5, Insightful)
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near several massive passenger and freight hubs for the USA, haven't noticed. Plenty of planes still flying, maybe more freight than normal makes up for the passenger drop.
Talking about O'Hare, Midway, and Rockford International (freight, does a lot of UPS)
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near several massive passenger and freight hubs for the USA, haven't noticed. Plenty of planes still flying, maybe more freight than normal makes up for the passenger drop.
Talking about O'Hare, Midway, and Rockford International (freight, does a lot of UPS)
I can confirm that freight really picked up over the whole covid thing. It was either Hamburg/Frankfort to Chicago that was the big surprise for me, seemed like that route randomly picked up a lot of traffic.
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Had to - since the belly cargo of passenger airplanes was gone.
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I know when I'm in them middle of the forest, the distant roar of highways [dot.gov] miles away and the sound of jets overhead may not ruin the experience, but it takes a little bit away from it.
When there's a blizzard or other event that shuts things down, I always try to get outdoors to enjoy the rare break from noise.
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I like the quiet. For almost a month I didn't hear a single jet engine fly overhead. It was nice.
I lived near the airport in Wichita KS when 9/11 happened. I drove by the airport every day and it was weird. Lots of large aircraft parked but noise at all. Very disquieting for the few days that all aircraft where grounded with no departures or arrivals, even the freighters in the middle of the night. To me, it wasn't nice at all. The quiet was the sound of the economy imploding and the death of innocence. Neither where good things.
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This is "News" (Score:2)
This was known - and reported on - at the time, is it now considered news because even the US government has noticed?
OTOH a clear day now means clear here (Score:5, Interesting)
Ie a blue sky, not a smear of polluted ice crystal from spread out contrails.
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Re: Easy solution (Score:1)
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