Reasures to the US agency, which is responsible for the weather forecast, and climate science on this side of the border have concerned about the reliability of data that Canada needs to make dangerous events, carry out precise flood forecasts and to understand more comprehensive changes to the climate.
At the end of February, President Donald Trump’s administration – one of 500 and 800 – at the National Weather Service and the parent organization NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shortened more than 1,000 jobs in two laps. That is about 10 percent of the NOAA workforce.
Danny Blair, a climatologist, is the co-director of the Prairie Climate Institute and Geography Professor at the University of Winnipeg, described the cuts as “amazing and discouraging”.
During the loss of capacity, such as Blizzards, Tornados, Thunderstorms and Tsunami’s “prediction of Blizzards,” will almost certainly lead to more people in the United States in danger, “he said.
“The production and distribution of more precise and timely forecasts requires an army of qualified and experienced staff, as well as data acquisition and research that is behind the development and improvement of these forecasts,” said Blair.
Blair said that the United States should be even more dangerous with climate change that the United States should not reduce the addition to weather forecasts and climate scientists. Much of the world is based on the US weather and climate science, he noticed.
“In order to understand what happens to the Prairie climate, you can not only view data that has been collected on one side of the border,” said Blair.
Flood forecasts count on US data
Manitoba Flood Prognostics also rely on data collected by the US weather service, since more than 85 percent of the Red River basin are south of the US border, said Jay Doering, emeritus professor in civil engineering at the University of Manitoba.
Manitoba’s hydrological forecasting center requires US data to understand the soil moisture, the snow cover and other factors that determine the seasonal risk of flood for Winnipeg and the rest of the Red River Valley.
“This data tends to come from two sources: the National Climate Data Center and the National Weather Service, both of which fall under the roof of Noaa,” said Doering.
“Many of this data are collected from local instrumentation, and the United States has far more satellites in orbit than monitoring things associated with atmospheric conditions.”
In February, the Trump government ordered the NOAA scientists to obtain their Canadian colleagues before communicating. This was a change in the close cooperation between scientists on both sides of the border.
In the past, meteorologists in the National Weather Service Office in Grand Forks, ND, with environmental and climate change Canada in Blizzard, Tornado and Thunderstorm, said Jared Marquis, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
“The weather understands no limits. The weather crosses borders all the time,” said Marquis.
The National Weather Service Office in Grand Forks, he said, was so understaffed before the Trump government’s attitude came into force in January that meteorologists except Kansa’s warnings and forecasts for East -Nord -Dakota and Northwest -Minnesota.
The Grand Forks Office is exposed to the loss of another employee who is currently on probation, said Marquis, who works closely with the National Weather Service.
“If you start reducing the number of employees or increasing the burden on these employees while you still have the same number of tasks, something has to break at some point. Hopefully it is something that is not mission critical, something that does not affect life,” he said.
There are now more questions than answers to the future of data acquisition and analysis by the national weather service, said Marquis.
“There is a location of the upper air, which set in northwestalaska for an indefinite period. These locations are important because they start weather balloons to get information about what happens to our weather on the upper level,” said Marquis.
“We have news about potential rental contracts for things like the Environmental Modeling Center (in Maryland), in which the USA carry out most of its weather models. It will take a long time for these devices and specialist knowledge to be moved to a different location.”
The US National Weather Service refused to comment on the cuts and cited “longstanding practice” in relation to “internal personnel and management facilities”.
The service continues to lead “weather information, forecasts and warnings according to our public security mission,” said Susan Buchanan, officer of public affairs in Maryland.
