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the world meteorological organization (WMO) fears that the pandemic could affect the quantity and quality of observations and forecasts, and monitoring of the atmosphere and climate
the WMO Some components of the monitoring system has already been exposed to. Especially notable was the impact of a significant reduction in air traffic
the WMO Map: countries shown in darker colors, in the last week spent less observations than the average for January 2020 (before the pandemic COVID‑19); the countries are shown in black, data currently do not provide
WMO
Pandemic coronavirus infection significantly influenced the everyday life of mankind. The world is challenged by economic and protocolsidents crisis, the collapse of health systems, and many other problems. Another problem was the changes in the work of the meteorologists, rather, systems of meteorological observations, which play an important role in many spheres of human activity.
the Concern about this was expressed by the world meteorological organization (WMO), which fears that a pandemic may affect the quantity and quality of observations and forecasts, and monitoring of the atmosphere and climate.
the organization noted that the global observing system of WMO serves as the basis for all types of weather and climate services and products provided by 193 States and territories for its citizens. It provides monitoring of the atmosphere and the surface of the ocean with land, sea and satellite instruments. The data obtained are used to prepare weather analyses, forecasts, advisories and alerts.
“the National meteorological and hydrological services continue to perform its core functions around the clock and seven days a week, despite the serious difficulties caused by the pandemic coronavirus infection. We appreciate their dedication to the protection of people and property, but take into account all large constraints in terms of capacity and resources,” said WMO Secretary-General petteri Taalas.
Many of the components of a monitoring system such as a satellite and a ground network of monitoring a partially or fully automated. It is therefore expected that they will continue to function without significant reduction in capacity for several weeks, and in some cases even longer. However, if the pandemic will last longer than a few weeks, then no repair, maintenance, supply and relocation of equipment will be cause for concern.
Some components of the monitoring system has already been exposed to. Especially noticeable influence is mucinoe reduction of intensity of air traffic. Flight measurements of ambient temperature, speed and wind direction are extremely important sources of information for weather forecasting and climate monitoring.
Commercial aircraft contribute to the System for the transmission of meteorological data from aircraft (AMDAR) using on-Board sensors, computers and communication systems for collecting, processing, formatting and transmission of meteorological observations at the ground station via radio and satellite communications.
In some parts of the world, especially over Europe, for several weeks there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of measurements. The States members of EUMETNET (grouping of 31 European meteorological services) to discuss ways to temporarily exploit the potential of the other components of the observing networks to partially mitigate the impact of short observations from aircraft.
Under normal conditions observing system AMDAR produces more than 700 thousand high-quality observations of temperature, speed and wind direction, provides the necessary spatial-temporal information and produces more measurements of humidity and turbulence.
In most developed countries, surface meteorological observations are currently almost entirely automated.
However, in many developing countries, the transition to automated observations is still not complete and the meteorological community continues to rely on observations that are performed manually by the experts on weather observation and transferred to an international network for use in global weather and climate models.
For the past two weeks, the WMO was faced with a substantial decrease in the availability of such non-automatic observations. This phenomenon can be partly considered a consequence of the current pandemic coronavirus infection, but so far it is not clear I play the role of other factors. Currently, WMO is addressing this issue.
“At the moment, it is expected that the negative impact of the shortage of observations on the quality of meteorological forecast products will be relatively moderate. However, as the increasingly declining availability of weather observations from aircraft are expected to gradually reduce the level of reliability of forecasts,” said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, Director of the Earth system Department, WMO infrastructures.
“a Similar situation can be expected in the case that the number of surface weather observations will continue to decline, particularly if the flash COVID‑19 will begin to exert more influence on the ability of observers to carry out their work in many developing countries. WMO will continue to monitor the situation,” he said.
there are currently over 50 16 meteorological and research satellites, land of 10,000 weather stations, with staff and automatic, 1000 upper-air stations, 7000 ships, 100 moored and 1000 drifting buoys, hundreds of weather radars and 3000 specially equipped commercial aircraft produce daily measurements of main parameters of atmosphere, land and ocean surface.
“the impact of climate change and a growing number of weather-related natural disasters are still relevant. Pandemic COVID-19 creates additional difficulties and can exacerbate the risks associated with many hazards at the country level. It is therefore important that the government drew attention to the possibility of early warning and weather observations at the national level, despite the crisis caused by the pandemic COVID-19”, – said the Secretary General of WMO, petteri Taalas.
