The World Meteorological Organization said recently that the sharp reduction in global flights caused by the COVID-19 epidemic has caused a significant drop in meteorological data monitored by aircraft.
This affects climate observations and data collection and may lead to inaccurate weather forecasts.
The WMO stated that civil aviation commercial flights use onboard sensors, computers and communication systems to collect and process various types of meteorological observation data such as ambient temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity and airflow, and transmit them to ground base stations via satellite or radio networks.
They can provide more than 700,000 pieces of key data to the organization's "aircraft meteorological data relay" project every day, which is an important source of information for weather forecast and climate monitoring.
However, due to the outbreak, a large number of flights were grounded, and the data obtained in the past few weeks have also been greatly reduced. The situation in Europe is particularly serious.
At present, the relevant agencies are discussing the countermeasures. The WMO stated that the surface weather observations in most developed countries are now almost completely automated, but many developing countries still rely on manual observations and data recording.
In the past two weeks, the amount of data reported by these countries to WMO has also decreased significantly.
The WMO said that climate change and weather-related catastrophic events will continue to occur. The new crown epidemic has exacerbated the risk of a country facing multiple disasters at the same time.
Therefore, governments of all countries must pay attention to their climate warnings and meteorological observations while responding to the epidemic.
