The Future of the "Public-Private Partnership"
Toward a More Synergistic Relationship in the 21st Century

Michael R. Smith
WeatherData, Inc.

In recent months, the meteorological community finds itself debating the mission of the National Weather Service, including its relationship with private sector meteorology. In the United States, weather information is provided to citizens, business and governmental entities through a mix of National Weather Service and private sector meteorologists, the latter of which includes media meteorologists, in-house corporate meteorologists and commercial weather companies.

In attempting to find the optimal roles for the National Weather Service and private meteorology, a useful analogy for the field of meteorology is the provision of security. We depend on our government to protect us from threats, be they foreign or criminal. We assign this responsibility to our military and police, respectively. Using this analogy, the citizens of the United States could reasonably expect the government to provide protection from weather "threats." If one agrees with this analogy, warnings of hazardous weather for the general public and the infrastructure needed to create those warnings would be a legitimate governmental function.

Yet many businesses, and some individuals, feel they need police services above and beyond what are provided by government. For them, there is a private security industry that ranges from entire industrial police and fire departments to private security companies to alarm services. These private agencies generally coordinate with government-provided police services. The private security industry is not just site-specific (i.e., a burglar alarm), it is also event-specific.

Consider the Professional Golf Association's Kemper Open. It hires private security for crowd and traffic control since the ordinary level of police service is inadequate to handle events of this nature and size. Similarly, if tournament organizers believe the meteorological service provided by, for example, NOAA Weather Radio, is inadequate, they should pay for private "weather security."

Private sector meteorology dates to the 1940s, and tornado warnings, color radar, and in-home agricultural weather displays are just a few of its many contributions. Today, the private sector weather industry in the United States is increasingly sophisticated, providing a wide variety of services. These range from pavement-based computer models for fighting winter storms, track-specific storm warnings for railroads, and helicopters and automobiles equipped to chase tornadoes and broadcast live video. Commercial weather companies use state-of-the-art technology comparable to, and, in some cases, exceeding that available to National Weather Service field offices. Since the clients of these companies pay fees for the services received (when they could use free services from the government or media) and, since the private sector is growing rapidly, one may conclude there is a generally high level of satisfaction with the services provided by commercial weather companies.

Occasionally, our colleagues in the National Weather Service (www.nws.noaa.gov) will assert it is "unfair" for private sector meteorologists to prosper by "repackaging" their work. I disagree with this assertion. For example, the private sector weather industry is the only "customer" of the National Weather Service that pays the incremental cost of the service it receives from the NWS. We pay "user fees" for the Domestic Data Service, WSR-88D data, and other services. The public does not pay a user fee for NOAA Weather Radio. While some "repackaging" of NWS products does occur in commercial meteorology, most commercial weather companies create their own forecasts and add value in other ways. At WeatherData, Incorporated (www.weatherdata.com) we go beyond creating our own forecasts and provide specialized storm warnings, both synoptic and mesoscale, for our clients. But, even if a forecast is repackaged, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. In a capitalistic economy, a role of government is to create opportunity for the private sector. We see this in many industries such as commercial aviation. The commercial airlines use the air traffic control system as a part of their business. No one proposes the Federal Aviation Administration create an airline simply because it provides infrastructure.

Infrastructure is at the center of this debate. There are more than 100 private sector weather radars, many of which produce external data that is more timely than the WSR-88D's. Private sector environmental satellites are being planned. Private sector companies are running meteorological models. States and television stations are creating mesonetworks. Virtually all of this non-federal data eventually will be available through the Internet or other communications systems to meteorologists of all types. The National Weather Service could provide valuable leadership and facilitate the integration of all of these non-federal sources into our nation's meteorological database, which would allow the whole to be much more than the sum of its parts. But, will it?

History is not encouraging. In the 1950s, the Weather Bureau discouraged Oklahoma television stations from broadcasting tornado warnings. And, as incredible as it seems today, in the 1970s the NWS attempted to restrict real-time weather satellite data and in the 1980s blocked the interstate distribution of tornado warnings and certain types of guidance. Even in the 1990s, with both the Public-Private Partnership Statement (www.nws.noaa.gov/im/a06toc.htm) in place and the Paperwork Reduction Act, the NWS still does not distribute its entire output to the private sector on the same complete and timely basis as it does internally. Some in the NWS apparently want the agency to duplicate the same services to business as private sector weather companies even though it has neither the resources nor policy authorization to do so.

I believe the optimal role for the National Weather Service is to provide infrastructure (including observations, modeling, and research) plus hazardous weather warnings and the current level of weather forecasts for the general public. Because of existing law and treaty obligations, the NWS should continue to provide current aviation and marine forecasts and warnings. All other meteorological services should be provided by the private sector. The NWS should consider the media, emergency managers, and commercial meteorologists as its primary and most important customers.

This change in mission and mindset would allow the NWS to enhance its importance in the new century and better leverage the taxpayers' investment. A narrower mission would focus NWS resources on collecting more and better data and excellence in hazardous weather forecasts and warnings. Private sector meteorologists, freed of the threat of unfair (tax-supported) competition, would become the National Weather Service's strongest champions as our interests much more closely align. I believe this vision would benefit the National Weather Service, the commercial weather community, the national economy, and most importantly, American society.

— Michael R. Smith
Certified Consulting Meteorologist
President
WeatherData, Inc.
Wichita, Kansas
www.weatherdata.com

Comments? thunder@ucar.edu

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