Weather service
A weather service , also a meteorological service , is a meteorological service provider in the general sense. A distinction must be made between private weather services with a purely commercial focus, which mostly concentrate on weather forecasting or expert reports, and state weather services that work on behalf of a state or public sector (municipality, state, canton, etc.)
tasks
Weather services operate meteorology and climatology , record weather values and other weather- relevant data through weather observation , create weather forecasts and severe weather warnings , conduct scientific research and keep data archives .
History and forms of organization
State weather services
The oldest state weather service in the world is the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Austria, which was founded on July 23, 1851. In addition to operating their own measuring networks and evaluating, disseminating and archiving this data, public information and, above all, international data exchange and membership in international measuring systems (e.g. EUMETSAT ) and forecast centers (e.g. . ECMWF ). In addition, state weather services are mostly active in application-oriented research.
In the field of weather forecasting , two different systems have emerged due to the enormous increase in costs since the development of modern devices and electronic forecasting using weather models . State weather services have to work economically for self-financing in many countries, so they are in direct competition with private weather services. Europe's public weather services are generally obliged to sell their data to private weather services. At the same time, they should also compete with private customers and market weather forecasts to cover costs or profitably. As a result, much of the data is no longer freely available on the market. A European cartel of large countries is currently forming to regulate the prices for weather data uniformly (new ECOMET price mechanism). The US National Weather Service (NWS), for example, is obliged to provide all data to private weather services free of charge. This results in a strong penetration, cooperation and market division between private weather services and NWS. By detaching state tasks from weather information “for the market”, the NWS gets by with fewer state employees than Europe's weather services.
Most government meteorological services are also required by law to work with other international meteorological services. The cooperation between the various weather stations and services has a long tradition. Even in times of war, data exchange sometimes remains intact. In addition to the actual state meteorological services, there are often other state or state-commissioned bodies that issue official meteorological services, e.g. B. Aviation weather services , storm surge warning services , avalanche warning services . In many countries, the state weather service forms an organizational unit with the hydrographic service ( hydrometeorological service ) , in some cases also with general environmental warning services (an exception is the Austrian ZAMG, which is combined with the geophysical service for earthquake warning etc.). In some countries the weather service is part of the military or an organization subordinate to the Ministry of Defense (Italy, Greece). These military weather services also function as national weather services and mostly also employ civilian personnel.
International services
Examples of supranational weather services are EUMETNET (Europe) with its Meteoalarm warning center and the UN's Severe Weather Information Center .
"Semi-public" weather services
Even in times of fully automatic data transfer and satellites, the meteorologist's experience is irreplaceable - as is his familiarity with local and regional influences. This plays a particularly important role in the weather station of almost every airport ( aviation weather service, flight meteorological service ). That is why aviation weather services are state or semi-state or are under state supervision in many countries.
The military weather services ( military meteorological service ) are also official but not public . Your data are subject to confidentiality. In some countries no public service of its own has developed at all, but the military service also takes on the other tasks, for example with MeteoAM in Italy.
A recent development can be seen in the measurement and analysis of lightning and thunderstorms . As part of “Lightning” projects such as BLIDS , “semi-public” services are already in place in many European countries, and the research of individual universities and the interests of insurance companies have also been incorporated into the establishment of these services . The latter partially finance the system (e.g. lower legal costs in the case of insurance fraud ). B. in Austria overview files from ALDIS (integrates the pan-European project EUCLID) are generally accessible via hora.gv.at.
Private weather services
In addition to aviation weather services, there have been more and more private weather service providers in the ECOMET countries since the 1990s, such as WetterOnline or the weather center . The competition has resulted in a variety of special products. Private weather services only rarely operate their own measurement network (such as MeteoGroup ).
Most of the television stations have their own weather services, including specialized ones, such as the British Weather Channel or its German counterpart wetter123.com .
In Germany the private sector is organized in the Association of German Weather Service Providers , in Switzerland in the Association of Swiss Meteo Providers (SMA)
Data sources and measurement networks
Meteorologists rely on a variety of data, methods, and other services to provide their services. These data sources are mostly in the hands of the state weather services. On average, there is a weather station every 20–50 kilometers in industrialized countries . Your data are received automatically or are given by telephone (in addition to later use on lists). Most of the data from the measurement sources listed below are also automatically included:
- Automatic weather stations - mostly distributed at roughly equal intervals across the country - for regular measurement of temperature (air and soil), air pressure , humidity , cloud cover or sunshine duration, wind and precipitation . They send their results to a control center by radio or via data lines. Their wide range of measuring devices are usually standardized within a country, but often different from one country to another.
- Analog weather stations with weather observers (except at important weather stations mostly private individuals) who read the above parameters three times a day during the so-called Mannheim hours (7 a.m. - 2 p.m., or 7 a.m. - 2 p.m.).
- Data and images from weather satellites ( e.g. Meteosat ), weather radars and other remote sensing methods .
- Data from radiosondes . Depending on the size of a country, the probes are raised in one or more places and measure the air pressure (as a measure of the altitude) as well as temperature and humidity or dew point . The wind can be determined from the position of the balloon or partially calculated from its radio signals. Separations are usually carried out every twelve hours (0:00 and 12:00 UTC ), less often every six hours.
- In the past, data collection by maritime weather services also took place with weather ships .
- Data from other weather services, e.g. B. the aviation weather services or specialist departments of federal states and individual large municipalities.
- Forecasts from our own numerical weather forecast models or from regional analysis centers (for Europe e.g. from the ECMWF in Reading )
- and special data depending on the application.
The oldest weather stations have continuous data series of over 200 years (e.g. in Kremsmünster ). Shifting the temperature measurement by a few meters can be problematic.
Weather radar station of the German Weather Service on the Feldberg
Weather balloon (hydrogen balloon with reflector)
Weather radar in a Lufthansa Boeing 737-500
The A-Train Earth observation satellites
See also
Web links
- Meteorological station of the Jülich Research Center , description of a complex station that is integrated into the climate measurement network of the German Weather Service .