Why the US is behind in weather forecasting

You can’t stop the deadly tornadoes that ripped through the southeast U.S. this week or the severe storms that knock out power or cause floods in the Pacific Northwest. But you can give people more time to get to safety.

All you need is a supercomputer. The Europeans have one and they’re doing a better job of weather forecasting.

“Right now, if you compare the skill over the globe of the U.S. weather prediction against, say the European Centers or the British or the Canadians, we have actually fallen behind all of them,” said University of Washington professor Cliff Mass, into fourth place.

To improve forecasting, the weather expert, in his regular blog post says the U.S. needs to run multiple forecast models in high resolution.

“The Weather Service cannot run at high resolution these many forecasts because they don’t have the super computer resources to do so. And if they got this new machine, it would allow them to forecast these kind of weather events, severe thunderstorms or, here in the Northwest, heavy precipitation in the mountains, much, much better,” said Mass.

The computer purchase is stalled, said Mass, even though Congress has appropriated the money.

“They’re having problems getting the computer from IBM because IBM sold their supercomputer side to the Chinese and the U.S. doesn’t want a Chinese computer doing weather forecasting,” Mass explained.

The head of N.O.A.A., which overseas the National Weather Service, testified before Congress Wednesday. Kathryn Sullivan outlined the agency’s major accomplishments in 2013 including completion of a weather radar network and weather forecasting satellite system. She also mentioned efforts to combat global warming.

One member of Congress chastised Sullivan for quote: “promoting climate alarmism for children” rather than focusing on improving weather forecasting.”