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The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet

Posted by michael on from the looks-like-rain dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The National Weather Service wants to update a 1991 policy that limits what data it can put on the Internet. The proposed new policy makes putting free data on the Internet official. The Private Weather Sector wants NWS to provide its new digital forecasts only in specialized data formats and would like NWS to shut down new XML data feeds. Barry Myers (MS Word doc), president of Accuweather wants you to have pay before using Kweather and other similar tools. Myers is asking friends to comment against the new NWS policy by June 30. Should we have to pay twice to get weather forecasts?"

15 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. It should be free by bobhagopian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nobody should ever have to pay for a service which provides the same information as a quick look out the window does. And if they do charge something for it, the vast majority of people *will not* pay.

  2. Who pays for it? by Mazem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who pays for the National Weather Service? If it is taxpayer money then setting up a pay-service on the internet seems counter-intuitive.

    1. Re:Who pays for it? by UnrepentantHarlequin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So a government monopoly on weather services benefits us how exactly?

      This is not about a government monopoly on weather services. The government has been providing this information for decades. It is, in fact, the very data that private weather services use to base their forecasts on. Accu-Weather and other corporations do not want to stop the government from producing this data -- they want to limit the government to providing it only to corporations, not to private citizens, so that they can resell the information that we taxpayers have already paid for back to us at a profit.

      In addition, this would prevent some other entrepreneurial meteorology graduate student from using that data to make forecasts for local ski areas and eventually starting a weather company of his own ... which is how Joel Myers (Barry's brother) started Accu-Weather. This has nothing to do with a government monopoly on anything, and everything to do with protecting a few large companies from competition.

      Whenever taxpayers subsidize a service that could be provided in the marketplace, that subsidy undermines the development of true competition for that service.

      The private weather companies are not asking the National Weather Service to get out of the weather data collection and weather forecasting area. Those companies absolutely depend on the thousands of hourly observations collected by the NWS, on the computer forecast models generated by their supercomputers, etc. What those companies are demanding is that the NWS provide this data -- which we the taxpayers have already paid for -- only to the corporations, not to the taxpayers.

      Any time Accu-Weather wants to pay to establish a network of thousands of observation stations to get the weather data they depend on, buy a few of the world's largest supercomputers and develop their own software to run models, launch satellites to track global weather, etc., then they are entirely within their rights to make that data available only to their customers. But we pay for those stations, for those supercomputers, for those satellites, and all the rest -- the very services that Accu-Weather and other corporations depend on to generate their own forecasts -- and we have every right to the data generated from them in any and every format that the National Weather Service -- the people employed by the taxpayers to do the job -- wants to give it to us, their employers, in.

    2. Re:Who pays for it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Prove it. I don't think the public is going to be much or less safe just because they have a single agency doing this. A single agency represents a single point of failure, and in this case what recourse does the public even have if the NOAA screws up?

      Imagine this situation...

      Category 3 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. One agency issues warnings for Texas/Louisiana Coast, the other agency issues warnings for Texas/Mexico border.

      What do businesses/homeowners do? Evacuations and closings cost BILLIONS of dollars and you have two widely spaced areas that have been warned.

      This shouldn't be hard to imagine because, it has happened in the past. One agency was the NWS (TX/Mexico) and the other was AccuWeather (TX/LA). Now, AccuWeather couldn't put out warnings, but they put out forecasts that differed significantly from the NWS. Luckily, people generally listen to warnings over forecasts, so there was little impact.

      As far as "who is responsible", do you honestly think that AccuWeather or Landmark Communications (Weather Channel) would be in business if you could sue them for incorrect forecasts?

      As to conflicting warnings, I assume that most of the warnings would be the same type of stuff and that the public could make decisions based on a consensus model or majority of warnings thing.

      Bwah, ha, ha, ha, ha. Thanks, I needed a laugh.

      The biggest weather threats to personal safety all develop fast and are highly unpredictable. The path and strength of hurricanes, snowstorms, and tornadic mesocyclones are hard to predict - there are too many variables and not enough observation resolution to allow to highly accurate models 100% of the time.

      During these times of crisis, you want the public to weigh each of options and try and make a informed choice? In the case of tornados, seconds can be the difference between life and death.

      Imagine what the public hears the night before a Nor'easter:

      "Well, ABC is saying that we are going to get rain. NBC is saying 30" of snowfall by tomorrow night, KYW is forecasting a dusting, and FOX has it sunny and warm throughout the weekend."

      And you want them to make a decision on this? This is the same public that has caused hair dryer manufacturers to put "Do not use while sleeping" on their product.

      More likely I would think that if I have health or homeowners insurance or other policies that weather is likely to affect, that the insurance company would have a preferred weather service that they would require me to use when it comes to things like whether or not to board up my windows and vacate the area.

      Homeowners insurance is based on climatological data, not on instantaneous weather conditions. As I said before, no forecast is going to protect your house if a tornado hits it; basing personal property insurance on an instantaneous occurrence doesn't make actuarial sense.

      Furthermore, an insurance company will take whatever steps are necessary to limited claims. This means that they may require those covered to "close up shop" at the drop of a hat. Such closings cost those covered significant amounts of money.

      On the other hand, a government agency does what is best for the public. There is no pressure to try and "scoop" the competition with an early warning (which we have seen time and time again with TV weather people). They realize that issuing warnings that prove false only wastes money and erodes confidence in their product.

      Bill C.

    3. Re:Who pays for it? by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I live in the sticks. I mean that literally. To 99% of the country I live in the middle of freaking nowhere. This town has no gas station. It doesn't have a grocery store. We have one cafe that opened less than a month ago. Main street is paved in bricks. This town has a population of 231 at the last census. You see as many horses on main street as you do trucks. By all accounts I live in a deserted area of the country (though heavily populated when compared to areas of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, or western Kansas. I do however live in one of the most important areas of the country, meteorlogically speaking. I live in tornado alley. Don't know what "tornado alley" is? Lets just say that we have a helluva a lot of tornados, more so than anywhere else in the world. I live east of the nearest town with a TV station and weather dept. Take note of the word "east" because that's very important. Tornadic weather in this area almost always moves west to east in general (NW-->SE, SW-->NE, etc). More often than not our local TV stations have live coverage of all storms west of their area. No commercials, no regular programming, just wall to wall coverage of the cloud floating overhead. That all changes as soon as the storm passes their precious little town. We're only 2 counties east of the TV station(s), 90 minutes driving time from town, and yet they rarely ever bother to cover us. If we're lucky we might get a glimpse of a radar image in the corner of the screen. Beyond that we're on our own. NOAA is the only entity that seems to give a rat's ass about us. They aren't in it for the ratings like our local TV stations. They only care about weather and the areas being affected. Without NOAA we'd be up shit's creek. I have 2 NOAA pages loaded right now since a storm went through a few hours ago. NOAA's NWS pages are indespensible. Privatizing weather forecasting will only lead to them concentrating on highly populated areas. They wouldn't give a damn about us in the sticks. You know, the ones that feed this country.

  3. Should be free. by dj245 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    We all pay taxes (OK maybe not all of us) that support things like weather sattelites, weather baloons, remote weather stations, etc. This is where the majority of the weather data comes from, and the funding comes from taxpayers ultimately. The NWS is a government agency. They compile the data from the balloons, stations, and sattelites, and make forecasts and charts and maps and graphs. Mariners, in particular, get a lot of data from the NWS directly and indirectly.

    On the other hand, Accuweather is a commercial venture designed to profit by delivering weather content to television studios and radio stations. They own no balloons nor weather stations nor sattelites. Why should we have to pay them anything? They only want to diversify their grip on the nutsack of private weather.

    --
    Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    1. Re:Should be free. by UnrepentantHarlequin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because the government should not compete with the private sector. It's a simple enough principle, if there's something that the private sector is willing to do for-profit, then the government simply should not compete with them.

      When Accu-Weather establishes their own network of thousands of automated and manned data collection stations, when they launch their own weather satellites, when they buy some of the world's fastest supercomputers and write global weather modelling software for them, when they set up hundreds of radar stations, and when they get a time machine to gather weather records from a hundred years before the company was founded, then they might have the right to deny information critical to life, safety, and livelihood to anyone other than their paying customers.

      But since we, the taxpayers, own all of that, no private company -- not Accu-Weather, not anyone -- has the right to restrict the benefits of those taxpayer-owned resources to themselves.

      Accu-Weather was not the first private weather company. If a system such as they want, where some or all data is limited to distribution solely to existing corporations, then Accu-Weather would never have been born. A grad student named Joel Myers wouldn't have had access to the data he needed to start making forecasts for local ski areas, and eventually expand that to a worldwide weather service. Of course, that scenario is exactly in Accu-Weather's best interest. Remember, while it's in our interest, as consumers, to have open competition in any given market and a wide array of choices, it is in the interest of the companies in that market to reduce competition and to raise the highest possible barriers to entry into that market, to protect their own position. That's what this is all about.

  4. The Solomon solution... by Genda · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is so simple... Either the weather information we pay for through our taxes is provoded to the public for free... or Accuweather can foot the entire bill for weather collection and charge whatever it see's as a fair market price for the service. I would just as happily see my tax dollars returned to me, and watch the weather on the evening news, or buy a small personal weather station.

    Genda

  5. Free Weather Could Save Lives by miyako · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think having free weather information is not only a good thing, it could save lives. I live in the midwest, where for a few months a year (tornado season), you can really be taking your ass in your hands if you don't keep up with the weather. I'm sure it's the same in other regions of the country with various other weather patterns (hurricanes in the south-east, snow storms in the north and north east).
    I don't own a TV to be able to watch the weather on the local news, (thought I do have a weather radio), and for people like me, it can really be a good thing to have forwarning.
    All that aside, this guy sounds like a real asshat because, while I could understand if the companies were doing any work, them wanting to make money, his complaint seems to be "Hey, don't just publish this information in a way anyone can get it for free, obfuscate it first so that we have a product to sell."
    Of course, if all else fails you can easily tell the weather with just a rock and a string. First tie the rock to the string then hang it outside from a tree branch. When you want to know what the weather is outside, just look at the rock. If the rock is wet it's raining, if the rock is white it's snowing, if the rock is easy to see it's sunny, if the rock is hard to see it's cloudy. If the string is not perpendicular to the tree branch, it's windy. And if the rock is missing, tornado.

    --
    Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
  6. Argument over data format, not availability by Chromal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interestingly, we have Accu-Weather spearheading an attempt to make the data formats put out by NOAA less accessible to non-meteorologists. Much of this data is readily available in obscure meteorological data formats like the dense GRIB-format 5-dimensional GFS model output and the equally obscure METAR surface obs format (whose byzantine structure dates back to the 1940s when observations were distributed codified and via teletype).

    Make no mistake about it-- all of this data is publically available via FTP, or C-band satellite downlink (aka NOAAPORT). What the leader of the industry consortium (which does not represent all meteo firms by a long shot) is apparently protesting is NOAA putting out data in a modern format that ANYONE, not just meteorologists, may be expected to work with. He is, perhaps, upset with the notion that in this day and age of realtime data exchange on the Internet, it really doesn't take a BS in meterology and a publisher like a newspaper, TV station, or radio station to get the weather from the government to the people-- his business's model, acting as an interpreter that (for a fee) translates the data produced by the National Weather Service into something the public understands-- this model of business is becoming incresingly obsolete.

    Any protests about NOAA supporting new and more accessible formats is a cynical cry for business or industry protectionism, nothing more. Which is a shame-- there is plenty of room for innovation in the weather industry-- niche forecasts specialized for markets where small-scale accuracy matters (like the agricultural and power industries), or more advanced and interactive web-based tools (like The Weather Underground's NEXRAD interface) can innovate the way the public look at weather data.

    Support innovation, not protectionism!

  7. Ok I have an answer by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Barry Myers (MS Word doc), president of Accuweather wants you to have pay before using Kweather and other similar tools.

    fine. then the US government needs to increase Commercial use of NOAA weather data fees by 100 fold. Little Barry, in his childish hissy fit, fails to realize that the NOAA weather data is the property of the United States Citizens and Government... So let's appease him. Anyone want to intorduce legislation that any commercial use of NOAA data has higher fees and 20% of all profit made from said data must be paid back to help fund NOAA and other government weather research.

    It's high time as americans we got off our lazy asses and start smacking around childish losers like Barry and other Company officials that while about people getting something that they pay for through taxes. do what you can to introduce new legislation to "bitch slap" these morons. if worded right it would go through in a heartbeat as it would be a new significan source of income and congresscritters can't turn their back on money.

    some of the mapping companies tried this about 5 years ago with the USGS release of their tigerline data maps. they were whining that it would undermine their business and other equally stupid erasons for keeping the data OUT of the public's hands. but they still wanted the free access for themselves.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  8. SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTS! by Alsee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Be sure to submit a comment through ths page.
    Here's the comment I submitted:

    As a government agency, the purpose of the NOAA is to serve the public. Data which has been generated or collected using tax dollars belongs to the public and should be freely available to the public.

    Information provides the greatest benefit when it is freely available and most widely utilized.

    Thus far the NOAA has had a "non-compete" policy. I have no doubt the NOAA is receiving pressure from special interests to maintain that policy and to withhold data from the public. Business is a good and valuable thing when it provides the public with needed services, however the government should NOT be protecting unneeded redundant services at the direct expense and detriment of the public. The government should not be creating an artificial scarcity of information. The public should not have to pay a second time for information it has already obtained through tax dollars.

    -

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    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  9. taxpayers by spacepimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if it is paid for by taxpayers monies, then it should be freely accessible.. why limit it to people who want a business model off of it. if it devalues their business model, so be it they were only pimping on something we already paid for. their content wasnt theirs to begin with.

  10. We do and should! by L0C0loco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The government must fund and support the weather service activities simply because it is an issue of the health and safety of the public. By your reasoning we should privatize the military too. Given the fact that we (those of us that pay taxes at least) are already paying for this work and the information it generates, we should not have to pay for it again nor be required to provide a subsidy to the "weather corporations" so they can profit from it directly. They need to enhance the products by some value-added activity of their own.

    --
    -- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
  11. Horseshit by Croaker · · Score: 4, Insightful
    if there's something that the private sector is willing to do for-profit, then the government simply should not compete with them.

    Absolutist Libertarian drivel. You mean I can start up any business that dies something the government does, and then force the government not to do it anymore? So, if I start a business of printing IRS tax forms, and want to charge $50/ea. for 1040 forms, I can forc the IRS to stop printing and distributing them free?

    Why not let the government do the things it can do efficiently, and for the greater good, and let the private sector worry about the things it can do most efficiently? Free weather data is a huge benefit to all... like a (mostly) free road system. Why privatize it just so someone can extract extra money out of people?

    Most of the posts also miss the business model. The government collects the raw data, and that is made freely available. What Accuweather and the like do is turn that raw data into value-added products like maps with pretty colors, icons, etc. They translate the science into a form that average people understand.

    No one missed the business model. That Accuweather adds value by interpreting data doesn't perclude other individuals from getting the data the National Weather Service collects and doing the same thing for free. That's what the Accurweather people are asking for... a ban on the free flow of information. They want to privatize this public knowledge under lock and key, so they and they alone can profit from it. People aren't looking to shut down Accuweather... they are just asking for the same priviledge that Accuweather has.

    A value-added business model is perfectly fine. But if you cannot make a profit off of a freely available resource that you add value to, then you should find another business model, not try to privatize the free resource.

    Your argument that they don't hold the entire system so they shouldn't hold any of it doesn't make sense. Otherwise the analogy could be extended like this: Microsoft owns Windows, so other complanies shouldn't write software for it. Apple owns the OS AND the hardware, so other companies shouldn't write software for it. These are not sentiments often found on /. Why should weather forecasting be any different?

    Bogus analogy. Microsoft and Apple own their platforms. And yes, as owners of those platforms, they could close them to outside developers. Windows and OS X systems are open in that anyone can develop software for them. Apple and Microsoft know that if they tried to control the platforms to that level, they'd be sunk, because there's no way for them to develop all of the software people would want on a PC. The market wouldn't tolerate it.

    Have you tried to develop software for a the PS2, Game Cube, Xbox, or other gaming platform? Those aren't open systems. You have to get the developers kits from the owners of those systems. Do you see the /. crowd howling about that all day?

    Accuweather doesn't own the data collected by the national weather service. They have no part in creating that data. Closing the data to the general public because Accuweather wants to protect its business interests would be like Red Hat closing the source to Linux because they want to protect their revenue stream.