Strengthening partnerships with Northern communities and other countries – coupled with AI-enhanced weather forecasting – could mitigate the impacts on Canada from U.S. cuts to weather research, services and personnel, says a former federal director general of weather and environmental monitoring.

Greater participation by and presence of Canada’s Northern peoples in providing weather services also could help assert Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic, said Jim Abraham (photo at right), a fellow and past president of the Canadian Meteorological and Ocean Society, who worked at Environment and Climate Change Canada for 36 years.

He chaired the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) expert panel’s new report on the future of Canada’s public weather service, prepared for Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“Cutting new [weather forecasting] systems and cutting research programs will ultimately have a long-term detrimental impact on the [weather] business, both in Canada and globally,” Abraham said in an interview with Research Money.

The Trump administration’s significant cuts in funding and personnel in the “weather enterprise” threaten a wide range of monitoring activities in Canada, from the Arctic to the Great Lakes, to satellite data on flooding, hurricanes, and changing atmospheric conditions, among others, the CCA panel’s report says.

“What it means is we’re just going to have to develop innovations locally, but also work even more closely with our partners internationally, especially the European Union,” Abraham said.

“I can see us, just like we’re doing with trade, enhancing our relationship with the European Union,” which has a globally important and collaborative weather services program, he said.

The Trump administration has significantly reduced the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) staff, research capacity and data-sharing capabilities, including weather forecasts.

The U.S. National Weather Service, in particular, has lost close to 600 staff at a time when 40 percent of national weather forecast offices are facing significant staff vacancies.

Abraham said the cuts left some U.S. weather stations short-staffed, so they were unable to fulfill their weather-observing requirements – like regularly sending up weather balloons. This resulted in global data missing from these stations.

Abraham said he has seen 15 percent to 20 percent of U.S. weather stations unable to provide data at various times.

The loss of weather data can negatively impact the accuracy of global weather forecasting models, he noted.

“We’re the country closest to the U.S., so if there’s a [weather] station or two stations cut in Alaska, for example, that’s going to have an impact on the accuracy of the forecasts here in Canada.”

Diminished weather services and personnel in the U.S. also could impact Canada whenever there’s severe weather along the Canada-U.S. border, such as between Detroit and Windsor or along the Great Lakes, Abraham said.

If the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient staff to coordinate with the public weather service in Canada, “that could have a detrimental effect on us,” he said. “The best forecast will be the forecast or the warning that’s developed jointly between the two sides.”

Due to the Trump administration’s cuts, NOAA in June said it would discontinue "ingest, processing and distribution" of data collected by three weather satellites that NOAA jointly runs with the U.S. Defence Department.

Canada relies heavily on the remote sensing data obtained by NOAA’s geosynchronous satellites. For example, Canadian meteorologists use satellite data to estimate the strength and location of hurricanes approaching the Atlantic provinces. 

But due to the Trump administration’s cuts, “Canada’s access to rich remote sensing data may be in jeopardy,” the panel’s report notes.

Abraham said his understanding is that the U.S. cuts also have eliminated some of the aircrew from hurricane reconnaissance flights, “so there may not be as many flights into hurricanes. That could catch the U.S. and Canada by surprise.”

In February, the Trump administration also ordered NOAA scientists to seek prior approval before communicating with their Canadian counterparts. This marked a change to the historically close collaboration between scientists on both sides of the border.

Abraham said he’s especially worried that the Trump administration “is cutting anything that has a climate association with it,” including new satellite systems that were intended to provide both weather and climate information.

“If you cut research labs because they have the word climate in them, you’re going to be affecting the weather program,” Abraham said. “Research is fundamentally important for the advancement of weather forecasts.”

Canada’s public weather service “is at a crossroads”

Canada’s public weather service is at a crossroads as AI, climate change and its impacts, and shifting geopolitics change the landscape for weather observation, forecasting and warnings, according to the CAA’s expert panel report, The Future of Hydrological and Meteorological Services in Canada.

“We’re facing a critical moment for hydro-meteorological services in Canada and an opportunity to ensure that Canada’s weather service continues to serve the public interest,” Abraham said.

Financial constraints are putting pressure on Canada’s weather service to respond to climate change, rapid technological shifts, and the evolving needs of weather service users in Canada and globally, the report says.

Program spending on Canada’s hydro-meteorological public services has remained relatively static over the past five years, despite increased damages from extreme events.

Partnerships among public, private and academic organizations offer mechanisms to improve efficiency and deliver services under financial constraints. However, these also demand leadership and coordination of resources and skills, the panel’s report notes.

The panel determined that strengthening and diversifying domestic and international partnerships will help resist fragmentation of services and improve the end-to-end resilience of forecasts and warnings. Also, AI has the potential to dramatically change the way weather predictions are made.

At the same time, the panel says it is essential that the Meteorological Service of Canada continue to provide and maintain Canada’s backbone infrastructure, including a country-wide observation system and modelling capabilities, which remain critical to Canada’s weather enterprise and climate change adaptation strategy.

As of July, 2023, that backbone infrastructure included 575 weather stations, 225 cooperative climate stations, 29 lighthouse stations, 2,200 hydrometric monitoring stations, 32 operational radars and eight ground-receiving stations receiving data from satellite-born sensors.

The Meteorological Service of Canada’s essential and foundational functions are its weather monitoring and modelling programs, along with the weather warning program, Abraham said.

The panel’s report also underscores the need for the “Met,” as it’s known, to be the leader in aligning and coordinating the increasing diversity of weather services in Canada.

“In the face of a growing ecosystem of weather-related organizations and [private-sector] providers, somebody needs to ensure that the weather service collaborates and takes advantage of this appropriately. And that the groups are working together for the best interests of the Canadian public,” Abraham said.

Like all CCA expert panel reports, the report doesn’t offer formal recommendations. However, it provides some evidence-based strategies for Canada’s public weather service to adapt to the changing context of weather services and improve efficiency.

The report points to the need for a coordinated multi-government flood forecast system, including flash-flood warnings which currently no province issues.

“The distributed nature of flood warning and response initiatives is a weakness in the Canadian weather forecasting system,” the report warns.

The report also notes that private sector and media in Canada are already providing weather services, including to specific clients such as utility companies and municipal and provincial governments.

There now needs to be a conversation on what the roles and responsibilities of Canada’s public weather service should be, and those of the private sector’s and the media’s weather services,  Abraham said. “The question is: How should we work the weather enterprise so that we have the optimal design on who provides that ‘last mile’ of forecasts, especially the general forecasts?”

The Meteorological Service of Canada should develop the weather warnings and ensure they are disseminated and well understood – including the risk and uncertainty and the actions to be taken – and ensure these warnings are shared with everybody, he said.

“There are ways of working together so that the message is clear and consistent when it needs to be,” Abraham said. “And the activity for the less significant activities [such as general weather forecasts] can be done only or mostly by the private sector or by the media, for example.”

“Across Canada, effective service demands the breaking down of silos across all elements of the public hydro-meteorological service, whether they be between different orders of government or among different groups within the federal government,” the panel’s report says.

“This is the case for functions related to both weather and climate, as well as the R&D and technology that support these functions.”

Gaps in weather services in Canada’s North need addressing

Extreme weather events are costly. According to Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc., 2024 was the costliest year on record for weather-related insurance losses, totalling $8.5 billion.

The high volume of losses was the result of high-cost events across the country throughout the year, including a deep freeze in western Canada, flooding in Ontario, hailstorms in the Prairies, the Jasper wildfire, and the remnants of Hurricane Debby in Quebec

The panel’s report points out that there are “known gaps” in Canada’s existing weather observation network.

For instance, inadequate coverage in the North, along with shifts in how weather and environmental conditions are monitored (e.g. increased focus on satellites and automation), have been criticized for not providing the information wanted and needed by people in these regions.

In parts of the North, there are hundreds of kilometres between weather stations, meaning some small communities do not have access to accurate local weather or climate information.

Additionally, less than one-third of stations located north of the 55^th parallel record at least three of five key weather variables (rainfall, snow depth, snowfall, temperature, and wind), and this percentage has declined over the last 30 years.

Providing weather services in Canada’s North is extremely expensive, Abraham said. However, taking advantage of new and existing partnerships in the North is a way of closing the gap in services, he added.

For example, there a weather research program and substantial weather service presence in Eureka on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, he said.

At the ArcticNet annual scientific meeting in 2022, Arctic Net and McMaster University hosted a side meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to develop connections, foster coordination, and encourage innovation in efforts to tailor weather, water, ice and climate services to better meet Inuit and other Northern community needs.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has identified the Arctic as a priority area for enhanced weather monitoring and services. The WMO has a panel called the Polar Panel in which Canada has historically played a leadership role, Abraham said.

An important way of improving weather monitoring and services in Canada’s North is to engage the people who live there, who need reliable forecasts of weather and ice conditions in order to safely hunt, fish and harvest, he said.

“It is partnering with the people in the North, engaging them in taking observations of the weather and the ice, and engaging them to disseminate the weather forecast by being part of the process.”

Having the presence of a government-funded, networked weather service in the North is a way of demonstrating sovereignty and can help the federal government achieve its priorities in this area, he said. “I do think we need to put a focus on the North.”

AI technology expected to have the greatest impact on weather services

When it comes to using new and emerging technologies in the weather enterprise, Abraham said he thinks AI is now having and will have the greatest impact.

Along with AI, other notable technological advances are those in remote sensing, miniaturization of sensors, and Internet of Things-enabled sensors and observation systems, according to the panel’s report.

The weather service “value chain” starts with making observations, assimilating data, and then using this data in computer models to generate weather forecasts, which are then translated into advice for people to take decisions based on these forecasts.

AI is very good at taking data and assimilating it in a model, in a way that enables a picture to be drawn more clearly, Abraham said.

Current research being done on modelling suggests that a hybrid approach that uses the conventional observation-based physics models, combined with AI’s capability to assimilate large amounts of data, will produce more accurate weather models and weather forecasts and forecasts prepared more quickly, he said.

AI could be used, for example, to help forecast weather conditions along specific transportation routes, or enhance decision-support systems in determining actions to be taken based on weather warnings.

Using conventional models and AI also makes it possible to conduct sensitivity tests to identify gaps in weather monitoring and forecasts.

“I think the models and AI can help to optimally design a network that would be as efficient as possible,” Abraham said.

The challenge is to ensure that the data is available openly and freely to Canada’s and other countries’ weather services but also the entire weather enterprise, including researchers and universities, he said. “You really want the data to remain accessible, even when the private sector is providing it.”

That’s where leadership plays a role, Abraham said. He said the Meteorological Service of Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada need to determine what their roles are and collaborate and coordinate with the private sector, to determine the best way to provide weather services “that [are] actually cheaper and more effective.”

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