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New Bill Would Ban Public NOAA Weather Data
ckokotay writes "Here we go again. Apparently for-pay weather companies (specifically Accuweather) have lobbied Senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill to ban the National Weather Service from 'competing.' The NOAA just made data available for free on the internet in XML format. Essentially, that means no more free data, and the possible elimination of the NOAA web presence all together. Nothing like being able to buy off a clueless Senator - lets hope the rest do not fall in line, as I for one, do not like to pay for my information twice." This debate picks up where the last one left off. According to the article, the bill's biggest critics are complaining of the bill's vague wording which makes it unclear what exactly is being banned.
here
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
He is an extremley conservative senator, and so Dan Savage of Savage Love decided to name something horrible after him and try to overtake Santorum's official site as the number one site on Google. He succeeded... Hilarity Ensued. Check it out!
http://www.pterrys.com
Here's the text of S. 786. Thankfully, no co-sponsors yet. Here's hoping that most Congresspeople see this bill for what it is - lunacy.
I wonder this will include GOES satellite data. This will be a major blow to me becuase I run my school's weather center. This is stupid if you ask me? Hopefully this won't spell the end for the NWS.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
It'll never work, unless you are a political contributor to Senator Santorum's political campaign.
The good news is, it's cheap! Only $3550.00 for the favor.
(Thanks to BooBoo at Fark for the link)
No sig
Now, I only worked (past tense) for the NZ MetSvc for 10 months so I've probably got this stuff wrong. :)
o c
My understanding is that by agreement national weather services share data with each other without charge - other than data distribution charges.
If the US started to charge for this, they might run into problems with (say) the UKMO.
It is standard practice for met organisations to make their model data freely available, Environment Canada does this:
http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/grib/index_e.html
The WMO lays it out pretty clearly:
http://www.wmo.ch/web/pla/Res40Cg-XII.d
If the US govt decides not to offer XML anymore, that's fine, they'll probably have to provide the grib... Grib is a lot bigger than the XML...
Google for "free grib data". GRIB is the file format used by the computer models.
So, if we really wanted to, we could parse the GRIB data and relay it as XML for everyone else.
Jason Pollock
Senator Santorum's bill would probably cause a measurable loss of life, given that numerous spotters such as myself rely upon NWS's Internet-accessible data to assist us in our spotting activities.
I just returned from spotting in extreme southwest Iowa (and am actually headed back out, as we have flash flooding to assess). I'm a trained weather spotter (not a chaser, mind you) and am an amateur radio operator. I'm one of two active spotters covering the far southwest-most county. Unlike spotting in a major metro (where I was first active), rural spotting often requires you work without a lot of coordination from net control at the NWS offices. We have to move to cover the storm, and this requires we watch NWS radar data very closely - both to allow us to be positioned to get a good view of activity (e.g. the north of most typical Midwestern supercells is a great place for hail but not for visibility - get southeast of it!), and to cover our backsides when things suddenly change and we're too close to the action.
I've used Intellicast, Accuweather and other sites. Their free data is delayed, poor, lacking sufficient detail, and simply not usable. As I donate annual training, several thousand dollars of equipment, radios, mobile broadband Internet, and my time, I'm not about to also purchase a subscription to Accuweather just so I can assist NWS and save lives. (A note about the NWS XML example: I've actually prototyped an XML to APRS relay of NWS data that uses their XML feeds - it's not just webpages we require!)
The people that will suffer will be those of you who are not weather aware and count on the quiet volunteers out there watching your back. Santorum's bill might prohibit our access to open source information and provide a handful of investors with financial gain, but it'll be someone's grandma in a rural community who will pay for that gain.
Please email your Senators on this bill and let them know that open source information is our property. Your weather spotters and ultimately our communities depend on this access.
If you read The Onion, or more specifically the Savage Love column in their A.V. Club, you wouldn't need to google for the definition.
Sen. Santorum rated this honor for some of his past comments and deeds.
For this one he deserves a liberal dousing of the stuff.
...carrier dead.....
It's misleading that the article suggests NOAA just scrapped a policy that stated what the National Weather Service's role would be in relation to private industry. A law had been in effect defining these roles, but the law had expired. In absence of such regulation, NOAA found an applicable OMB requiring them to disseminate the data in an open format. NOAA has made an effort to comply with the regulation and follow the law.
It is absolutely false that the NWS spends lots of time producing forecasts of warm and sunny. This is nothing short of a lie. Forecasts are issued twice daily in most situations. It will still be necessary for the NWS to produce a forecast in all cases because even if it's warm and sunny today and tomorrow, it's very useful for example to monitor and be aware of a storm system that will have an impact a few days out. Forecasts are produced more often or are updated when a change in the weather is expected, such as showers and thunderstorms. This is referred to as nowcasting and is a necessary function of the NWS. While I can't cite this as a fact, I would expect a much greater amount of time is spent nowcasting or forecasting significant weather than is spent producing these forecasts of warm and sunny.
The National Hurricane Center disseminates information about tropical cyclones and is not disseminating these forecasts of warm and sunny that the private industry suggests NOAA spends too much time doing. The NHC has an extremely important function and is working to improve its products for the purpose of providing better alerts to the general public about approaching threats. To suggest the NHC is hampered by such duties as producing warm and sunny forecasts is a lie.
Furthermore, it is extremely important that accurate weather data be available to emergency managers and to weather spotters. These are important beneficiaries of data such as radar data and nowcasts produced by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center. While emergency managers will likely pay the fee and get access to data provided by private industry, it is less likely that spotters, which are the general public, will be willing to pay. Effectively, this could cripple an important means of detecting severe weather. I guarantee that without accurate radar data, I'm not going to try to spot a tornado and relay the information in; it's just too dangerous.
I am a meteorologist and I have also heard the opinions of many other meteorologists that I attend school with. The consensus about companies such as the Weather Channel is that they do not provide accurate timely data. Their on-air personalities generally have little knowledge of meteorology. They operate their own forecast model which my fellow meteorologists do not believe produces quality and reasonably accurate solutions. And I've heard that many of the actual meteorologists at the Weather Channel lost their jobs. Anyone who's watched their broadcasts probably has noticed their tendencies to focus on the East and West Coasts even when the middle of the country is receiving severe weather. They hardly do a reliable job of disseminating information about potentially dangerous weather to the public. Is this really who we want in charge of forecasting and providing information to the public?
I find this bill to be based around lies and to have the ability to be extremely harmful to the ability to detect severe weather. The Senate should not approve this bill.
As an ex-employee of AccuWeather, I'm really not surprised to see this. Joel Myers is a corrupt tyrant. Slimeball Pennsylvania politicians were always coming into the building to meet with him. There's a picture hanging in the hallway of Myers shaking hands with Bill Clinton. I'm not surprised he has Santorum in his pocket now.
During my years at AccuWeather, there seemed to be only two things Joel Myers tried to accomplish - to stop NOAA, and to prevent the employees from creating a union. Joel Myers treats his employees like slave labor. He entices young meteorology students from Penn State into signing contracts with them - then works them rediciously long hours without compensation. If you want to quit, they will sick their horde of corporate lawyers on you quicker than you can bat an eyelash. Their lawyers write up big complicated contracts with their customers, which happen to have automatic renewal clauses if AccuWeather is not notified by certified mail within 60 days of the end of the contract. This is the way they run their business. They don't give a shit about their employees, customers, or the general welfare of American citizens who support NOAA with their tax money.
Anyone in Happy Valley reading this, avoid working at this place like the plague!
By the way, for those of you who don't know Rick Santorum, you may remember him from a few years ago when he made national headlines by comparing homesexuality to incest and beastiality.
Several years ago, before Rick Santorum was a big shot politician, I was living in Pittsburgh and he was running for some local office, going door to door trying to get support. I was in middle school at the time, in the yard playing with my dog. She saw Santorum coming and didn't like him at all.. she ran to him, started barking and growling. I guess she was a good judge of character.