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Private Companies Are Now Gathering Weather Data for NOAA
WindBorne Systems is one of several companies launching balloons, drones, buoys, and other devices to provide critical data to the beleaguered agency’s National Weather Service, but they can’t fill all the gaps.
The Alaska office was one of about a dozen to suspend or scale back balloon launches in response to deep staffing cuts instituted by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Called radiosondes, after the instruments they carry, traditional weather balloons cover just a fraction of the Earth, because it is logistically challenging to launch and receive data from them over the oceans and in remote areas. The NWS isn’t moving to replace radiosondes—yet—but it is in the “early stages” of planning for a new suite of upper atmospheric observing systems that would provide data “substantially similar to the federal radiosonde network,” Marshall wrote.
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