what if we had no government-run models in the US?

[Jim Marusak]

ok, here's a question for everyone. totally hypothetical, and not very realistic but if it can be thought up maybe it could happen, sort of like one of those TWC "it could happen tomorrow" episodes.

 

given what is going on with the potential of a government shutdown and debt ceiling, and the possibility that this one may be a bit more entrenched if cooler heads prevail....  let's look at this scenario...

 

we're into week 6 of a government shutdown....  all the non-essential activities have already shut down, causing all types of problems, from shut down national parks to museums and monuments being shut down to non-essential staff being furloughed at all types of offices from the IRS and Social Security to the passport office at the State Department and even the rest of the defense contractors that weren't hurt the first time. but due to the cash flow problems caused by not raising the debt ceiling there comes a point where the money isn't there for all of the following: social security checks, soldiers pay, bond holders, TSA personnel, Air Traffic Control Towers, FAA observation stations, and even essential NWS services like running the models that weather forecasters all over the US and the globe use for forecasting.

 

so the heads in the legislative and executive branches decide that to preserve law and order we have to sacrifice the TSA, the air traffic control tower workers (letting even major airports be at the discretion of the pilots), the national weather service is ordered to send workers home at the main office in Md and let the models run automatically and the pre-described routines via computer script as well as the observations coming in to those models go in via those routines, and if anything happens they'll worry about the problem after the fact.

 

so now in week 8, with the models and observations coming in via auto-pilot, all of a sudden we have indications of a major storm developing via satellite and surface observations. but the models do not pick up on the storm properly after repeated model runs due to the lack of human intervention and the storm starts to act more than a bit erraticly. then, given a bad observation or two, the models one by one totally crash to the point that mainframe is bogged down and no new runs can start up. and being that noone is allowed to go in and make the fix due to the government shutdown, the US is basically flying blind from a weather perspective. And since major providers of weather data that push out forecasts put most of their weight behind re-hashing model data at regular intervals instead of using human intervention, most of the forecasts and data that people use on their automated forecasts end up being not worthy of use or even non-existent.

 

could the US private weather industry, as it now stands, be able to withstand such a hit in its potential productivity, no matter how remote the scenario? could society as we know it today end up not functioning properly if that were to happen for more than say 12 hours but in timescales of days?

[Ed Lizard]

It could happen, sequester cuts are being intentionally directed to cause as much disruption to the public as possible and to be as obvious to the public (like cancelling Air Force flyovers at sporting event) as possible.  See the attempt to punish the public with the FAA cuts.  A step too far, that was walked back.  Ending volunteer led White House tours.  Symbolic punishments against the citizens.

 

So far, I believe the only budgets actually being substantially reduced are defense budgets.  Most other budgets are a cut to expected 'baseline' growth, not actual cuts.

 

 

But if someone did cancel the NOAA budget- I'd think even private organizations with in house versions of mesoscale models are dependent on soundings and satellite input, and wouldn't do to well without.  Not sure how badly degraded other nation's global models would be without sounding data and surface reports from the US, and if GOES support is lost, not sure the other national agencies have satellites that could even really cover the US. 

[wxmeddler]

I don't think people really know how much of their weather forecast derives from government products. If NWP went out, I think local met's and private companies could pick up the slack with hand made forecasts and alot of hiring and grubling of CEO's.  (The forecasts would be about the accuracy of 15 years ago.) What would be funny to watch would be all the apps, and website scripts like weather.com and their app that just pull data from NWP and spit it out by zipcode start to fail, and all the sudden people are turning on the news to watch the weatherman again.

 

The one thing that I think people would freak out over is if we lost NEXRAD. Everyone relies on their app or weather.com or whaever to check the radar. Which of course is all supplied by NWS/NEXRAD. Imagine the outcry if all the sudden all that was replace by "Out of Service due to Gov. Shutdown".

[LakeEffectKing]

King Euro!!!

[Ed Lizard]

If it was just US models out, but full soundings and satellite and the such, using foreign globals, private mesoscale models and the Canadian mesoscale, which covers most of the United States, would probably get the job done with only some degradation of the quality.

 

 

If they furlough the entire NWS, and nobody coordinates watches and warnings, that could get ugly.

[LakeEffectKing]

 

If it was just US models out, but full soundings and satellite and the such, using foreign globals, private mesoscale models and the Canadian mesoscale, which covers most of the United States, would probably get the job done with only some degradation of the quality.

 

 

If they furlough the entire NWS, and nobody coordinates watches and warnings, that could get ugly.

 

Americanwx.com would stand to gain a 10-fold increase in membership! And paid weather sites would be able to price gouge the heck out of the public!

[Visiteur]

King Euro!!!

 

That was my first thought. Models only, I figure met companies that can afford it would seek access to ECMWF runs, and many operations would turn to use of foreign models. If the NWS staff is out of commission due to a govt shutdown, then we have a very serious issue. With private orgs left to pick up the slack, data would large come from private sources and be charged at a premium, affecting various consumers. Most companies would tenaciously try to avoid more manpower (with some failing miserably and some doing well, I figure a probable result would be a number of short-term temp hires). While some older mets may like to see a return to the "good old days" before models were in heavy use, any sudden and deep/long-scale disruption to the current system of data collection, analysis and dissemination would be nothing short of chaotic, and severely damage public faith in entities like the NWS.

 

I wonder if Joel Myers has fantasies about this. As unlikely as this hypothetical is, it is an interesting thought exercise.

[MN Transplant]

It could happen, sequester cuts are being intentionally directed to cause as much disruption to the public as possible and to be as obvious to the public (like cancelling Air Force flyovers at sporting event) as possible.  See the attempt to punish the public with the FAA cuts.  A step too far, that was walked back.  Ending volunteer led White House tours.  Symbolic punishments against the citizens.

 

So far, I believe the only budgets actually being substantially reduced are defense budgets.  Most other budgets are a cut to expected 'baseline' growth, not actual cuts.

 

 

But if someone did cancel the NOAA budget- I'd think even private organizations with in house versions of mesoscale models are dependent on soundings and satellite input, and wouldn't do to well without.  Not sure how badly degraded other nation's global models would be without sounding data and surface reports from the US, and if GOES support is lost, not sure the other national agencies have satellites that could even really cover the US. 

 

That is not true.  Actual real-dollar cuts happened pretty much across the board, including NOAA.

[AvantHiatus]

Hopefully that day never comes as the cost of running the NWS in respect to other departments is rather insignificant. I can imagine the loss of certain services such as COOP and mabye weather observing/reporting at some airports.

 

It is really something that cannot happen (not in our best interests) because it would imply an overall decline of the nation.

[WNash]

Ed, for what you're saying-- that sequester cuts for discretionary programs like NOAA to come from a reduction in the rate of growth of the spending on those programs-- the planned spending would have to have been greater than the actual sequester cuts. It wasn't. There wasn't $54.7 billion in new spending that was prevented by the sequester, leaving existing services alone. Planned budget increases by 2013 were minimal (remember the federal wage freeze?), barely above 0 in most cases. So a spending reduction of 8% to 8.5% is not offset by a cushion of hypothetical cancelled budget increases-- instead it means an increasing reduction on services, grant money cut, positions going unfilled from attrition, licenses not being renewed, hardware not being replaced, short term projects not getting done because of a lack of money for specialized contractors, etc. I'm seeing these problems arising already as NSF and other grant money has dried up-- labs at my university have had to let go of good researchers.

This stuff is real. Your post shows a lot of suppositions and no actual knowledge. I don't know enough to agree with the hypothetical scenario in the first post or speculate on the result, but I am sorry that you have followed up with a low fact post that you admit is driven by your political beliefs. Unpopular opinions aren't a problem, but low fact opinions are another thing entirely.

[Ed Lizard]

Ed, for what you're saying-- that sequester cuts for discretionary programs like NOAA to come from a reduction in the rate of growth of the spending on those programs-- the planned spending would have to have been greater than the actual sequester cuts. It wasn't. There wasn't $54.7 billion in new spending that was prevented by the sequester, leaving existing services alone. Planned budget increases by 2013 were minimal (remember the federal wage freeze?), barely above 0 in most cases. So a spending reduction of 8% to 8.5% is not offset by a cushion of hypothetical cancelled budget increases-- instead it means an increasing reduction on services, grant money cut, positions going unfilled from attrition, licenses not being renewed, hardware not being replaced, short term projects not getting done because of a lack of money for specialized contractors, etc. I'm seeing these problems arising already as NSF and other grant money has dried up-- labs at my university have had to let go of good researchers.

This stuff is real. Your post shows a lot of suppositions and no actual knowledge. I don't know enough to agree with the hypothetical scenario in the first post or speculate on the result, but I am sorry that you have followed up with a low fact post that you admit is driven by your political beliefs. Unpopular opinions aren't a problem, but low fact opinions are another thing entirely.

 

.

 

You know I didn't say that.  I think you are trying to bait me, but I must resist, except I sent some links via PM, since I am banned from AP. 

[mattie g]

ok, here's a question for everyone. totally hypothetical, and not very realistic but if it can be thought up maybe it could happen, sort of like one of those TWC "it could happen tomorrow" episodes.

 

given what is going on with the potential of a government shutdown and debt ceiling, and the possibility that this one may be a bit more entrenched if cooler heads prevail....  let's look at this scenario...

 

we're into week 6 of a government shutdown....  all the non-essential activities have already shut down, causing all types of problems, from shut down national parks to museums and monuments being shut down to non-essential staff being furloughed at all types of offices from the IRS and Social Security to the passport office at the State Department and even the rest of the defense contractors that weren't hurt the first time. but due to the cash flow problems caused by not raising the debt ceiling there comes a point where the money isn't there for all of the following: social security checks, soldiers pay, bond holders, TSA personnel, Air Traffic Control Towers, FAA observation stations, and even essential NWS services like running the models that weather forecasters all over the US and the globe use for forecasting.

 

<snip>

 

Just to clarify...if a government contractor has money on contract, they will be expected to work (and will even pick up some government slack, if needed and to the extent allowable by law).  A government shutdown is a completely different situation than budget-cutting measures, which obviously can and do affect government contractors. 

 

As to the actual question...I don't know enough to even hazard a guess.