TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070191/0701310.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.3 KB | 195 lines

                                                                                TECHNOLOGY, Page 58

Why Forecasts Are Getting Cloudier


Plans to overhaul the National Weather Service are so far behind
schedule that the U.S. could lose its capacity to see -- and warn
of -- the approach of dangerous storms

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT -- Reported by David Bjerklie/New York,
Wayne Greene/Norman and Dick Thompson/Washington


    The National Weather Service's new $3 million radar
outpost in Norman, Okla., proved its worth on its first day of
operation last March. That evening a series of thunderheads
rolled across the southern Oklahoma hill country. One storm cell
appeared -- at least on conventional radar -- to be relatively
benign. But not to Nexrad (for Next Generation Radar), a new
detection system that is powerful enough to track a swarm of
insects moving across a wheatfield 50 km (30 miles) away. The
domed instrument peered into the swirling winds and raindrops
inside the clouds and saw a tornado aborning. The Weather
Service flashed an alert to the surrounding community. Two
houses and $1 million worth of property were destroyed that
night by the cyclone, but there were no serious injuries. "You
can never prove you've saved a life," says Ron Alberty, director
of the Nexrad facility. "But I'm convinced many people's lives
have been spared this spring in Oklahoma."

    For weather forecasters, the radar station in Norman
represents the bright edge of what is technically possible. It
is the first of a proposed network of 160 stations that will
eventually blanket the U.S. with high-power radar, vastly
improving the accuracy of predictions. The network is part of
an ambitious $2.25 billion modernization of the National Weather
Service, almost a decade in the making, that also features a
fleet of advanced satellites, a mosaic of automated weather
stations and a high-speed information network linking them all
together.

    Unfortunately, the Norman outpost has also become a symbol
of broken promises, missed deadlines and unfulfilled potential.
Two more radar systems, one set for installation near Cape
Kennedy in Florida and another outside Washington, are still
sitting in packing crates, victims of a bitter contract dispute
between the agency and the manufacturer, Unisys. Meanwhile,
virtually every other part of the modernization program is
either over budget, technically flawed or facing stiff
opposition in Washington. The program could cost up to $1
billion more than originally estimated and is not likely to be
completed until 1998, several years later than planned. In the
meantime, the agency is forced to rely on outdated equipment
that is deteriorating so rapidly it could leave large sections
of the U.S. with no radar and satellite coverage at all.

    At a Senate hearing last week, government officials
admitted that they had "underestimated the complexity" of the
overhaul and pleaded for restoration of millions of dollars that
Congress might cut from the Weather Service's budget. Congress
members have not only balked at the soaring cost of the program,
but have also raised pork-barrel concerns about plans to reduce
the number of NWS offices around the country from 249 to 115 --
a reduction made possible by the greater power of the new
technology. "It's a minor version of the military-base
closings," says one NWS official.

    The Weather Service is in drastic need of renovation. The
100-year-old agency has become a technology museum. Its
forecasters still launch old-fashioned balloons -- 70 of them
twice a day -- to take readings in the atmosphere. They use
refrigerator-size computers that have less power than the
average desktop machine. And they depend on radar equipment that
runs on World War II-type vacuum tubes. This creaking system is
dangerously prone to breakdowns. In one notorious instance in
the winter of 1988, the radar sentinel in North Carolina was out
of service for 10 days, during which a batch of tornadoes tore
up the state, injuring 157 people, killing four and wreaking $77
million worth of damage.

    Even when the aged system is working, it has a blind spot
for what meteorologists call "mesoscale" events, measured in
minutes and tens of miles: tornadoes, flash floods, squall lines
and thunderstorms. Some Weather Service offices do not issue a
tornado warning until a human actually sights a twister -- by
which time it is often too late to get out of harm's way. False
alarms of flash floods have become so common that they are
usually ignored.

    Even under the best of circumstances, weather prediction
is an inexact science. Because the upper atmosphere is subject
to countless fluctuations, mathematicians say the theoretical
limit for a reasonably accurate forecast is less than two
weeks. But within this time frame, a number of innovations have
enhanced the meteorologist's prophetic powers. Supercomputers
build mathematical models that show the interaction of wind,
sun, temperature and humidity across the entire globe. And
Doppler radar -- the technology at the heart of the Norman
station -- is adept at spotting the destructive midsize squalls
that have traditionally taken forecasters by surprise. By
bouncing microwaves off the tiny droplets in the center of a
cloud and picking up the echoes, Doppler systems can map the
relative velocity of wind currents within the cloud.
High-velocity winds and a high level of organization can signal
the formation of a mesocyclone -- a precursor to a full-fledged
tornado.

    In the mid-1980s the NWS put together a plan to make use
of the new technologies. Since then the program has encountered
nothing but turbulence. Among the problems:



    FLAWED SATELLITES. In 1986 the Weather Service ordered
five advanced satellites from NASA to replace three that were
either out of commission or nearing the end of their life cycle.
One of the three died of old age two years ago. Another was
lost in space. The third is scheduled to run out of fuel in
mid-1993. Meanwhile, the new satellites, like so many NASA
products, have run into trouble: they are $500 million over
budget and three years late, and they have developed a
mysterious flaw that makes their temperature soundings
unexpectedly weak. A race is on to correct the problem, but if
the old satellite dies before a new one is launched, the U.S.
will lose its ability to monitor broad weather patterns across
the country, a situation NWS director Elbert ("Joe") Friday
calls "a national emergency."



    RADAR WARS. When the Weather Service put out bids for the
Nexrad system in 1988, the choice came down to Sperry (now
Unisys) and Raytheon. Sperry, which promised to build 121
machines for $386 million, was the low bidder. But two years
into the job, the company insisted that it needed an additional
$250 million to complete it. The government refused to pay, and
the company refused to make any more radars. Now, with the
Weather Service logging a record year for tornadoes (1,033 so
far this year), the program is still stalled in court. A
decision on whether to pull the plug on Unisys is expected
within weeks.



    COMPUTER MORASS. The Weather Service finally replaced its
main number-crunching supercomputer -- a clunky Control Data
machine -- with a slick new Cray Y-MP last year, and has been
upgrading the software for its radar and satellite stations. To
speed the dissemination of data and forecasts between its
central office in Camp Springs, Md., and weather stations around
the country, it is building AWIPS, the Advanced Weather
Interactive Processing System. However, AWIPS is already a year
late. Meanwhile, a report by the National Research Council in
May cast doubt on the ability of the NWS's small staff to manage
its other complex new programs.

    How did the Weather Service get into such a mess? Part of
the problem is bureaucratic: the NWS falls under the sway of
the Commerce Department, which has never shown much
understanding of or interest in the science or technology of
weather prediction. Pinched by tight budgets and layoffs over
the past decade, the agency was very nearly shut down under the
Reagan Administration, which in its zeal to privatize government
operations briefly proposed selling off the Weather Service's
satellite network to the highest bidder. Public outcry forced
the White House to scrap its plans.

    What the budget cutters forgot is that the Weather Service
is one of the few government operations that give every
American a tangible benefit for his tax dollar. Not only do
picnicgoers count on the predictions to save them from a
sprinkling, but thousands of businesses depend on the NWS for
their very survival -- from airlines plotting the most efficient
flight path to utilities trying to meet peak-load demands.
Farmers, fishermen, oil drillers, construction companies,
snowmakers, moviemakers, grain speculators and baseball umpires
all have an urgent interest in accurate weather predictions.
With hats in hand, NWS officials tried to impress this upon the
Senators last week. And while further technical delays seem
inevitable, the betting is that funds for modernization will be
found. Or, as the Weather Service might put it: the outlook is
overcast, with skies slowly clearing.