America's Weather Forecasting Being Torn Apart

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The federal organization overseeing the National Weather Services is being dismantled. The move will affect about 800 probationary employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including some of those tasked with weather forecasting, essential to detecting dangerous weather events.

One Weather Service employee took to X and posted “My heart breaks for those NWS/NOAA employees who are being let go today. National Weather Service is already incredibly understaffed and every meteorologist is critical and essential. This will undoubtedly cost lives as severe weather and hurricane season ramps up.”

Radar Experts

Among the most essential services are the Weather Surveillance Radar 1988-Doppler (WSR-88D) stations, which have 159 operational WSR-88D stations in the U.S. and U.S. territories. There are 10,600 Cooperative Weather Stations. The NWS provides instruments, training, and equipment maintenance for these stations. Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs): There are 122 WFOs nationwide. Each WFO has a geographic area of responsibility or county warning area.

The Weather Service is essential to the economy and a critical disaster warning system.

Nvidia And Google AI Products

AI could take on some of the tasks. Announced early this week, NVIDIA Earth-2 released its First Gen AI to Power Weather Super-Resolution for Continental US. And Alphabet also has a product. Google’s GraphCast is an AI model for faster and more accurate global weather forecasting.

It will be an early test of whether AI can replace humans in complex tasks requiring substantial judgment.