The National Weather Service has reduced weather balloon launches at some of its sites due to shortages of hydrogen and helium, potentially affecting forecasts and weather and climate research.
Some scientists said the disruptions, coupled with the closure of a yet-to-be-reopened launch site on Cape Cod last year, could affect forecasts, particularly in the New York-New England region.
The agency said it will use data from balloons launched at nearby sites and from other sources, including ground-based sensors, satellites and commercial aircraft. While balloons do have certain advantages, including the ability to observe at altitudes of about 20 miles, “This temporary adjustment will not affect weather forecasts and alerts,” the agency said when announcing the cuts last week.
But any reduction in observations is alarming, said Troy Kimmel, a meteorologist in Austin, Texas, and a lecturer at the University of Texas there. “Having this information in our atmosphere modeling is very important,” he said.
“We can’t go back and get this data,” said Sandra Yuter, a professor at North Carolina State University and an expert in remote sensing of meteorological data. “We will have big gaps”
Dr. Yuter said the blackouts show that the weather service hasn’t given enough priority to weather balloons, which has been the basis of the agency’s observations for nearly a century.
Gas scarcity is a solvable problem, he said, “If you think about something important, you solve the problem.”
“We take this situation seriously and are seeking all ways to resolve it,” said Susan Buchanan, spokesperson for the National Weather Service.
“The top weather observing program continues to make a significant contribution to our analysis, model data assimilation, and situational awareness of our forecasters,” he said.
Weather balloons, about 5 feet in diameter when launched, carry a small, expendable instrument package called a radiosonde, which transmits data about temperature, pressure, and relative humidity as the balloon rises into the upper atmosphere. The balloon eventually bursts and the radiosonde parachutes down to the ground, where it can be collected and reused.
Balloons are used all over the world and are launched twice a day at set times, usually 12 hours apart. The data is fed into computer models that provide short- and long-term weather forecasts and also becomes part of large long-term databases used in weather and climate research.
The weather service announced on March 29 that, with immediate effect, flights from nine of its 101 launch sites in the United States and the Caribbean would be reduced “due to a global helium supply chain disruption and a temporary problem with a hydrogen contract.” Supplier.” The agency said it expects additional sites to be affected.
The helium market has been hit this year by problems at the main local source in Amarillo, Texas, and by a fire at a major new facility in Russia in January.
All of the affected areas are in the east, from Tallahassee, Fla., in the north, to Buffalo and Albany in New York. Five use helium and four use hydrogen. The service said flights will be reduced to one per day to save gas for launching in dangerous weather, and will be eliminated entirely on good weather days.
On Monday, Ms. Buchanan said helium was delivered to a site in Greensboro, NC, and a full launch program has been restarted. But some of the other affected sites are out of gas or will soon be completely out, she said. The issue with the hydrogen supplier had been resolved, but it was unclear when gas deliveries would resume.
By measuring conditions through the weather column, radiosondes provide information crucial to understanding and predicting the development of storm systems. Mr. Kimmel said collecting this data could be important even if the weather is calm.
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“Who can say that this calm weather pattern won’t affect your forecasts for other locations?” said.
Dr. Yuter said the balloon data helps scientists understand the structure of the atmosphere and “feeds our understanding of what will happen as the climate changes.”
One of the affected helium fields is in Upton, NY, on Long Island. It is the closest launch site to New York, about 50 miles to the west.
Meteorology had to close its station in Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod, in March 2021 due to erosion. Ms. Buchanan said the agency is working to select a location for a new station as soon as possible.
Without Upton and Chatham, much of the East Coast, from Wallops Island, Va. to Portland, Maine, wouldn’t be covered by balloon launches.
Adam Sobel, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, said that while the weather service is facing a “difficult situation”, its statements that there will be no impact on the forecasts are not credible.
“The NWS claims that the loss of several radiosonde stations in a highly populated area had no effect on the forecast, it was accompanied by no supporting evidence,” he said.
The weather service has faced another glitch in its data collection ability in recent years. Around the world, commercial jets routinely and automatically provide weather data to weather services and similar organizations in other countries. In the first months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, these observations fell by about the same amount as air travel decreased by about 75 percent.
A study by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, data loss affected quality one of the weather forecast models.