US 'vital' for forecasting global weather extremes: UN
The United States plays a critical role in predicting global weather extremes, the UN stressed Friday, as mass layoffs at a renowned US science agency raised concerns that such life-saving forecasting services could be in peril.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—the leading US agency responsible for weather forecasting, climate analysis and marine conservation—has become a target since President Donald Trump returned to power in January, with hundreds of scientists and experts already let go.
The Trump administration is also reportedly considering terminating leases for properties housing vital weather service operations, in what could upend the US ability to provide accurate weather forecasts.
The United Nations' World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Friday highlighted how essential NOAA and the United States are to a vast system put in place decades ago to monitor weather and the climate globally.
"WMO values US leadership in meteorology, climate, hydrology, oceanography and atmospheric science," WMO spokeswoman Clare Nullis told reporters in Geneva.
"It provides vital weather, climate and water data and expertise which are vital to national and global well-being in our interconnected world."
The United States on average provides up to a quarter of the flow of meteorological satellite information used in operations globally.
It also provides three percent of globally-shared land surface meteorological observations and 12 percent of so-called upper air radiosonde profiles, which are the basic ground-based observations needed for global weather prediction.
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Combined with data provided by other countries, this "is the basis for accurate global weather predictions, which in turn are the basis for protecting people and livelihoods everywhere", Nullis said.
She also highlighted the critical work done by the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, which provides forecasting data that has "saved thousands and thousands of lives".
Nullis pointed for instance to the impact of Hurricane Beryl, a Category 5 storm that tore through the Caribbean before hitting the southern US states of Texas and Louisiana last year.
"The economic losses were big, but the loss of life from that was quite minimal," she said, stressing that that "was because of those advanced forecasts".
While the US contribution to global forecasting is immense, Nullis said that it too was reliant on international cooperation, which she described as "a win-win".
"The US benefits. The world benefits," she said.
"There is no way for a single country to protect its people without a global effort to manage data from local to regional to global platforms," she insisted.
"Weather, climate and water don't respect geopolitical boundaries, they don't respect electoral cycles."
© 2025 AFP