Weather data accessibility may cloud the achievements of ROMEX-1, despite global show of unity
Camille Sipple
Published Sept. 23, 2024
Radio occultation (RO) could be a game-changer in global weather forecasting, particularly when it comes to extreme weather events, a recent study examined. The availability of high quality data, however, is a key concern of meteorological scientists across the globe.
Extreme weather events, driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent every year. Ranging from rapidly intensifying hurricanes and tornadoes to catastrophic flooding, extreme weather has touched every part of the world. RO, a satellite-based system providing detailed atmospheric data, could significantly enhance Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models — if enough satellites work in unison.
That is where ROMEX-1 comes in.
The Radio Occultation Monitoring Experiment, or ROMEX-1 provided the largest collection of RO data to the global scientific community, free of charge. All known commercial and government providers submit their collections during a strict three month observation period. Valuable insights from the data will inform NWP models for at least a decade, study author and atmospheric scientist Benjamin Ruston said.
“Nothing like this has been done in the past. Already we are seeing very large impacts,” Ruston added.
Graph and caption from original ROMEX-1 study
RO data has the ability to improve the accuracy of NWP by nearly 20%, according to a 2022 study. In extreme weather events, this may mean the difference between life and death.
Daily RO data from numerous satellites is increasingly vital to weather forecasting, study author and atmospheric scientist Richard Anthes said. ROMEX-1 aims to demonstrate the need for additional satellites to enhance data quality, he explained.
“For a few extreme [weather] events, the difference could be huge,” Anthes said.
Though ROMEX-1 offered an international display of scientific unity, data accessibility remains a concern.
Christian Marquardt, study author and meteorological scientist at the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), said he has recently observed commercial companies beginning to sell RO data. This raises important questions about the balance between public and private access, Marquardt explained.
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Anthes echoed these concerns, pointing to an ethical dilemma: “Why should rich countries be able to afford data that are useful to everybody and withhold the data from poor countries?”
When RO data first became widely available, there was a meeting of 30 EUMETSAT countries, Marquardt recalled. The countries had two options: Invest in an expansive number of RO satellites for Europe alone, or a significantly smaller amount accessible to the entire world.
“I heard 30 countries, one after the other say they prefer to go the global exchange way,” Marquardt said.
Both Marquardt and Anthes explained they worry about the trust and sustainability of commercial RO data. If profits decline, companies may stop providing data, Anthes said.
Chris McCormick, president and founder of the commercial atmospheric data-collecting company PlanetIQ, said he views the profits of his company, and others like it, as tools to further expand the field of atmospheric research.
“I tell people money is a tool,” McCormick said. “And it’s nice to have a lot of tools, but you also want to use them. You want to hire more people, build the next generation, you want to make progress.”
PlanetIQ is “philosophically, open to open data,” McCormick said. However, they are still a company that needs to profit and make payroll in order to continue developing these projects, he stressed.
Calibration issues with PlanetIQ’s data contribution to ROMEX-1, surfaced at the Sept. 12 International RO Working Group, which McCormick attributed to NOAA’s outdated systems.
“Some of our data is purposely noisy because essentially NOAA — they don’t care about the high resolution because they haven’t upgraded their systems,” McCormick said. “Essentially they are back in 1995 […] That’s one of the problems with NOAA right now. They are not one of the top forecasters on the planet.”
The public sector, or government funded missions, don’t always run smoothly, Marquardt added. There are certain advantages to the private sector, but a balance of the two would be ideal, he said.
“We could find an optimum balance of availability, efficiency and long-term sustainability,” Marquardt said.
ROMEX was born out of the availability of commercial data, he added. Commercial data providers offered data sets to the study that went far beyond the data allocations of NOAA, NASA or EUMETSAT.
The balance of privately and publicly accessible data is not a conversation that will be disappearing anytime soon. The same questions will need to be answered as future observational techniques are privatized, Marquardt said. Scientific growth, however, will require the advanced, rapid development techniques of companies like PlanetIQ, McCormick said.
“If we were waiting for governments to fund the fourth generation instruments, which we’ve had on orbit for three years now, we wouldn’t have even started yet,” McCormick said. “We are trying to be both good denisons of the planet and a good foundation of research for climate and weather phenomenology.”
Commercial companies and government programs do agree on one thing: The collection of RO data is of paramount importance. However, fostering collaboration between public and private sectors will be crucial to harnessing the full potential of RO, better forecasting extreme weather events and saving lives.