The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet

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?"

Comments

Who pays for it?

[Mazem]

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

Re:Who pays for it?

[tdemark]

For reasons of commerce, national security, and personal safety, NOAA must gather significant amounts of weather data. Furthermore, to ensure that products like severe weather statements can be issued accurately, the organization must provide data such as current conditions and forecasts.

An artificial scarcity of data does nothing to help the people paying for it via their taxes. It only serves to help the bottom lines of a few large corporations whose only responsibilities are to themselves, not the citizens of the United States.

The services that are currently "experimental" or whose ultimate availability is unknown due to pressure from certain members of the Commercial Weather Industry should become permanently and freely available to anyone wishing access to it.

Back when data dissemination costs were high, it made sense to limit the NWS role in giving data to the public. By allowing only a few organizations to have access to the data and allowing them to sell it, those organization would pay the rather high costs to ensure the data was, in fact, available.

However, now that communication costs are so low, such a method makes no sense.

A recent letter from Barry Myers to members of the Commercial Weather Industry pleading for them to come out against the NWS Partnership Policy, he stated:

"Industries grow where risk is controllable or predictable. The present path of the NWS- controlled federal policy introduces greater risk to the private sector. Not less."

In this case, he is partially right.

However, the risk he is actually talking about is the ability for large commercial weather organizations to maintain a stranglehold on the sector.

You see, the products that NOAA currently offer, themselves, pose no threat to AccuWeather or other large organizations. It is just data, and most people don't want to look at coded data. They want an end product.

By allowing data to flow freely to the public, the NWS ENCOURAGES competition to the incumbents. Barriers that prevented bright entrepreneurs from pushing new services are greatly reduced and a new era of value-added products will be born.

To this end, I see no alternative but for NOAA to provide the services it currently does in a permanent, free fashion as well as to develop other offerings that benefit the taxpayers as it sees fit.

Re:Who pays for it?

[UnrepentantHarlequin]

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.

Re:Who pays for it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The Solomon solution...

[Genda]

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

Free Weather Could Save Lives

[miyako]

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.

Won't Happen

[artlu]

The NWS is pretty hardup for cash right now in order to waste money on developing Internet standards. This is probably a vapor article, which won't effect any of our little applications anyway. I use "WeatherPop" for the mac. It sits in the menu bar real nice and does not annoy me, which is the most important factor ;).

GroupShares Inc. - A Free Online Investment Community

Do your own Weather forcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use web based Weather feeds when you can pick the data off the satellite's directly???

Connect a 137-138MHz FM communications receiver or scanner to your soundcard and get colour images directly from overhead weather satellites. You can either build your own like I did or just buy a receiver.

For an explanation try:
http://www.emgola.cz/www_fa/meteosat_englisc h_how. html

and for a great tool: http://www.wxtoimg.com

Australia went down this path.... OS won :-)

[B747SP]

The Austraian Bureau of Meteorology had this little dilemma with it's Weather RADAR product several years ago. They apparently had a very small number (as in less than 20) of customers who paid rather a lot of money for access to the service. Someone wised up and figured out that the cost of collecting the money from such a small customer base wasn't cost effective, so they opened the product to all and sundry.

It's a really really useful tool. I use it at least a couple of times a week - basically anytime the weather seems a bit sus and I need to decide if to do a bolt from the office on my bike before a storm front hits, or to wait until it passes. The last four images thing lets you get a feel for which way the weather is blowing, etc, etc.

On Tuesday nights, when the Sydney Knights do their Tuesday Night Ride (TNR), we're all hitting the bom.gov.au site to see what the weather is looking like. If you ride a motorcycle and live in Sydney, Australia then you need to come on a TNR!.

Now Australia didn't seem to have the problem with the commercial weather services wanting to continue to charge customers for something that they already paid the government for... that's a whole new ball game. Still, I'm all for the gummint opening up public access to weather data in any jurisdiction - it's a really really really good thing. Let the snake oil sellers find a new flavour of snake oil - I've heard that the penis enlargement pill market is a good one.

National Weather Service funding...

[hadesan]

We the people, pay for the National Weather Service in the form of our tax dollars (2003 $800M, 2004 $824M). "The National Weather Service provides weather, hydrologic and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and oceans." (blurb ripped from Washington Technology.com)

I see no reason that we should have to pay for Accuweather to make a pretty graphic or the like. By opening up the data on the Internet you provide researchers, hobbyists, and tinkerers with a means to get up-to-date and accurate weather information easily as well as historical data.

NWS also talks about their Information Quality guidelines here - detailing their information and what is available.

Who knows maybe someone will develop a Weather@Home model which runs on the same principle as SETI@Home. It would be pretty cool to start doing climate models outside of the governments and universties Research labs...

Re:Middlemen

[benstrange]

"In order to protect the competitive nature of the privately-owned media, direct NWS participation with the radio and television media should be limited to those situations requiring urgent public action as in the case of severe or extreme weather and flooding or education and preparedness activities." [Proposed for repeal by the NWS].

I assume this means the NWS is allowed to tell people about impending doom, but nothing else. It follows, I suppose, that the proposed for repeal bit means they want to be allowed to tell people more than this. I have to admit I don't really understand the situation, not being in the US.

Besides, much simpler in England. If it's not already raining, it soon will be. Prepare accordingly.

Re:Stop setting up strawmen.

[Minstrel Boy]

Darned formatting.

http://www.1900storm.com

It's not a straw man argument. That was the greatest natural disaster (loss of life) in US history, and a significant contributing factor was that the fledgling US Weather Service didn't want to listen to the Cuban weather reports. Privatized weather companies may or may not be more willing to work and play together, but they certainly haven't shown the willingness to invest in the necessary infrastructure. Plus, in many countries private weather companies may *not* be able to cooperate, by government fiat.

Less government is generally better, but national infrastructure like weather services are a notable exception.

KeS

This "Business Model" Already Exist

[aroobie]

We pay for the IRS but can't do business with it on the Internet without paying a third party. This letter is simply wanting the same setup for weather companies that already exist for tax software companies. Just as a side note, I work with a good bit of weather software and I can assure you that the only data we get for free, from any source, are radar images that our doppler radar provides. Since all commercial users (I know of) already pay, this sounds like Accuweather wants individual user's cash. I have seen demos of all the major commercial weather software withiin the last 3 months (looking to upgrade our current software) including Accuweather and this may be a last ditch effort for Accuweather. Other weather software companies are showing advanced modeling, data presentation, and other features as the sellling point not what they can charge for the raw data. At least two other weather software companies did not even care where you got the raw data. I have seen one that actually used the xml data from NWS and used the no data charge as a selling point.

I agree with others here, i.e. Personal use of NWS data have already been paid for and should not fall into the IRS/3rd party software business model.

Re:Should we have to pay twice to get weather fore

[pipo]

"There is no national or continental weather service in Europe; private pilots have to pay for information, usually in the form of two daily faxes. This means that European pilots have to know even more about weather than their American counterparts because they must be able to predict conditions"

Not only there is no weather service, there are in fact no weather at all - Europe hasn't evolved a climate yet, unlike the US... and of course there are no pilots or airplanes whatsoever...

HINT HINT: you are living in a psychiatric hospital

Argument over data format, not availability

[Chromal]

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!

We do and should!

[L0C0loco]

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.