The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), on Wednesday, warned that the coronavirus pandemic had started reducing the flow of data essential for reliable weather forecasts and climate modelling.
According to WMO, commercial aircraft is an important source for global wind and temperature measurements, but flight traffic has dwindled due to travel restrictions and plummeting passenger demand.
“In some parts of the world, in particular over Europe, the decrease in the number of measurements over the last couple of weeks, has been dramatic.
“While the quality of forecasts has not suffered a lot yet, as the decrease in availability of aircraft weather observation continues and expands, we may expect a gradual decrease in reliability of the forecasts,’’ WMO said.
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In addition, the UN weather agency has seen a significant drop in manual weather measurements on the ground in developing countries during the second half of March.
WMO also said it is worried that the maintenance of satellite and ground-based observation equipment might become neglected if the coronavirus cases drag on.
According to WMO Chief, Petteri Taalas, the impacts of climate change and growing amount of weather-related disasters continue.
“Therefore, it is essential that governments pay attention to their national early warning and weather observing capacities in spite the COVID-19 crisis,’’ he said.
dpa/NAN
