Weather balloons popped by Elon Musk's DOGE: Why the cuts hurt forecasting
At least 11 National Weather Service offices have seen their twice-daily balloon launches to collect weather data suspended or reduced.
One of the ways that federal scientists obtain vital weather data is being curtailed by budget cuts from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
At least 11 National Weather Service offices around the country have seen their twice-daily balloon launches to collect weather data either suspended or reduced in number as the service copes with reductions to the federal workforce by the new administration.
Specifically, according to an analysis by Paste BN, weather balloons have stopped in three locations, reduced to once a day at six locations and are intermittent at two additional locations.
Why does it matter? "Taking weather balloons offline in the heartland of the United States ... will directly affect the NWS’s ability to predict severe weather, including tornado-producing thunderstorms," wrote Marc Alessi of the Union of Concerned Scientists in an online post Monday. "This could lead to more severe weather-related deaths that could have otherwise been avoided."
Why are weather balloons important?
The weather service launches weather balloons twice daily from 100 upper air sites throughout the mainland U.S., the Caribbean and the Pacific Basin.
These weather balloons carry "radiosonde" instruments that send back a range of data from the upper atmosphere that supports weather forecasts, including temperature, dew point, relative humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed and wind direction, according to the weather service.
That data is then fed into the computer models that meteorologists use to forecast our weather.
The impact of losing balloon data on computer model forecasts is "very concerning" and is a topic of ongoing discussion within the meteorological community, said Alan Gerard, who recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Severe Storms Forecast Laboratory.
Also worrisome is that “it seems certain that NWS staffing issues will only grow in the coming weeks, as we get deeper into severe weather season and approach the start of the 2025 hurricane season,” Gerard wrote last week.
Where have balloon launches been cut back?
The service announced on March 20 that it would temporarily suspend weather balloon launches in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, “due to a lack of” weather forecast office staffing.
The service cited the same reasoning for reducing balloon launches to only once a day at Grand Junction, Colorado; Gaylord, Michigan; North Platte, Nebraska; Aberdeen, South Dakota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Riverton, Wyoming.
On March 7, the weather service announced it would temporarily suspend some of the balloon launches in Albany, New York, and Gray, Maine, because of a lack of weather forecast office staffing. “Offices will perform twice daily launches when staffing permits.”
On Feb. 27, the service also cited a staffing shortage when it announced launches were being suspended at Kotzebue, Alaska.
In the announcements, the weather service stated the radiosondes are “one of many technologies” used to collect Earth observation data for weather models and forecasts. “Data is also collected from instruments aboard commercial aircraft, surface observing stations, satellites, radars and buoys,” the announcements stated.
However, “certain areas will be impacted more negatively than others,” Gerard noted. “There is now a large swath from the central Rockies into the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region as well as parts of the Northeast that will have significantly degraded upper air data for the foreseeable future."