This is something that can be monetized.”
Jacobs’ concern for the profitability of private
weather companies, Grimes says, “might be a
made-in- America point of view.”
Key leaders in the private sector remain
eager to work within the existing system of col-
laboration and shared data. “There is an evolu-
tion that continues to take place in the global
weather enterprise,” says Kevin Petty, director
of science and forecast operations and public-
private partnerships at IBM’s Weather Company. “But at the same time, I
want to reiterate the importance of what our national meteorological ser-
vices around the world do and that kind of traditional flow of data. We
shouldn’t, all of a sudden, run away from the way we’ve always done that.”
It would jeopardize the weather forecast when it’s needed more than
ever. If the existing exchange of global data stopped, everyone’s forecasts
would suffer. If the skill of private forecasts exceeded public ones, know-
ing the weather first would become a luxury—giving those willing to pay
a head start on evacuating ahead of a storm or preparing for its impacts.
But must public forecasts suffer for private forecasts to succeed? Or can
advancements in the private sector benefit public forecasts as well? The re-
markable thing about meteorology is how long it has hewed to its origins as
a global public good. The challenge for this new era—of both weather and
technology —will be to use innovation to improve the system technically
without degrading it socially. “There’s a social injustice with extreme events,”
says Grimes. “They at-
tack the most vulner-
able. Governments, no
matter where they are,
feel the obligation to
step up. They have a
social responsibility to
care for their people.”
In a speech to the
U.N. in September 1961,
President Kennedy used the aspiration of global
weather observation to redirect Cold War tensions
away from a missile race and toward more produc-
tive scientific endeavors. “Today, every inhabitant
of this planet must contemplate the day when this
planet may no longer be habitable,” he said. But
weather could be a realm of “cooperative efforts be-
tween all nations.” The threat today is climatic—not
nuclear. But Kennedy saw that we live on a planet
carved up by borders yet encased in a borderless
atmosphere. We still do.Adapted from The Weather Machine: A Journey
Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum. Reprinted with
permission of Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers^
Myers at a confirmation hearing in 2017Environment