Following the devastating impacts of hurricanes Milton and Helene, Meteorological Technology International finds out more about the key methods and technologies used to issue early warnings to help keep people and infrastructure safe.

In late September 2024 the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) spotted a broad area of low pressure in the western Caribbean Sea. Over the next several days, due to a series of what NHC warning coordination meteorologist Robbie Berg calls “complex interactions”, this weather system expanded into a tropical storm. By early October, the NHC had designated it a hurricane, naming it Milton.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE FEATURE: How are the latest early warning technologies protecting against devastating hurricanes? at Meteorological Technology International.

What do great frigatebirds, elephant seals, tiger sharks and jellyfish have in common? They have all been used to track meteorological and hydrological conditions around the world, and advances in tracking technology mean these animals could play an even greater role in climate monitoring in the future

 When US ecologist Morgan Gilmour began tracking great frigatebirds in a remote atoll of the Pacific Ocean as part of a conservation project, she had no idea that her work would prove to be a boon for climatologists. Gilmour, who worked for the US Geological Survey at the time, had started the project to “quantify how the animals were using or not using” a marine protected area around the Palmyra Atoll.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE FEATURE: How are great frigatebirds, elephant seals and tiger sharks tracking meteorological conditions around the world? at Meteorological Technology International.

On three consecutive days in late April 2011, a series of deadly tornadoes ripped across the USA. Known as the Super Outbreak, the weather event involved 360 tornadoes across 21 states and led to the loss of nearly 350 lives. It was the largest, costliest tornado outbreak – and one of the deadliest – ever recorded in the US. Many of those killed came from “vulnerable and under-served communities”, according to Dave Bieger, chief of the decision support integration branch of the US National Weather Service (NWS).

Bieger says that the Super Outbreak “underscored the need to support public safety officials in better understanding weather impacts so they can make informed and effective decisions”.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE FEATURE: How are impact-based forecasts developing to minimize the human and economic costs of weather hazards? at Meteorological Technology International.

Microplastics – tiny particles of plastic most often formed from the degradation of bulkier plastic waste – are known to be widespread in the environment, including in oceans around the world. However, a new study in Japan has become the first to confirm their presence in clouds.

The study, led by Hiroshi Okochi, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, explored the path of airborne microplastics (AMPs) as they circulate in the biosphere. Through their analysis of cloud water samples taken from high-altitude mountains in Japan, the research team was also able to shed light on the influence of AMPs on cloud formation and their potential negative impact on the environment, particularly their contribution to climate change.

Continue reading FEATURE: How are microplastics affecting how cloud formation? at Meteorological Technology International.

More research and tools are needed to help predict the effect of climate change on data-sparse mountain cryosphere regions globally, with experts predicting that rising temperatures and shifts in precipitation could have a severe impact on water availability.

With high temperatures, flooding, storms and wildfires becoming more frequent in many places around the world, the effects of climate change on human populations are increasingly apparent. But it is in the Earth’s cryosphere that climate change has been most extreme. 

According to NASA, Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice mass at an annual rate of about 150 billion tons and 270 billion tons, respectively.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE FEATURE: How experts are measuring climate change’s effect on data-sparse mountain cryosphere regions and global water availability at Meteorological Technology International.

In June 2023 the US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a grant of nearly US$92m to the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to fund a new airborne radar technology. Known as the Airborne Phased Array Radar (APAR), the system will be fitted to the NSF/NCAR C-130 aircraft and used in the study of high-impact weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos and blizzards.

Linnea Avallone, the NSF’s chief officer for research facilities, believes APAR represents a major step forward for climate science. “From the science perspective, I think this radar will bring us a generational leap in our ability to observe severe weather, understand the dynamics of storms, and look at the microphysics particulates in clouds and how they evolve,” she says.

Continue reading FEATURE: How NCAR’s next-generation airborne radar technology will take high-impact weather forecasts to new heights at Meteorological Technology International.

US weather technology company Canopy Weather has teamed up with risk management firm Global Risk Solutions (GRS) to streamline weather-related property damage claims.

Canopy Weather will provide real-time property-specific wind and hail damage analytics. The data will be used by GRS to assess and speed up insurance claims.

According to NOAA figures, there were more than 4,600 hailstorms in the USA in 2018, resulting in US$810m-worth of damage to property and crops.

Matt Van Every, CEO of Canopy Weather, said, “There is more to damage than just hail size. Maximum hail size is not the whole story.

Continue reading Weather tech company and risk management firms partner to ‘streamline’ damage claims at Meteorological Technology International.

The Israeli-American tech firm Mellanox will provide data storage technology to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF) next-generation supercomputer.

ECMWF signed a €80m (US$87m) deal in December for a new supercomputer for its forecasting operations.

Atos has partnered with Mellanox to fit the new system with Mellanox’s HDR InfiniBand product, a high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solution for data center servers and storage systems.

InfiniBand is scheduled to be installed alongside the Atos system at the new ECMWF data center currently being developed by the Italian government in Bologna sometime this year. As yet there has been no indication from the UK-based forecasting center of how the current Coronavirus pandemic could impact the construction schedule.

Continue reading Tech firm Mellanox to be part of build for next-gen European supercomputer at Meteorological Technology International.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has joined forces with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to create a new online tool to monitor the availability and quality of global meteorological observations.

The new web-based system that was launched last week monitors the performance of the WMO’s Integrated Global Observing System (WIGOS).

The software will form part of the WIGOS Data Quality Monitoring System (WDQMS), which assesses the availability and quality of land-based observations of weather conditions at Earth’s surface.

WDQMS relies on near-real-time monitoring data from three global numerical weather prediction (NWP) centers besides the ECMWF: the German national meteorological service (DWD), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).

Continue reading WMO and ECMWF launch web tool to assess quality of weather observations at Meteorological Technology International.

Scientists have uncovered clues about the origin of an unusual geological structure off the coast of Japan, believed to have contributed to the devastating tsunami that struck the country in 2011.

The tsunami killed close to 20,000 people and caused a nuclear disaster in the country after a Magnitude 9 earthquake under the sea-bed triggered a wave that rose up to 40m-high in some places.

The tsunami’s most obvious cause was the quake’s location in a subduction zone where the Pacific Ocean tectonic plate was trying to slide under the continental plate on which Japan sits.

Continue reading Study of fault lines uncovers theory about why Japanese tsunami so devastating at Meteorological Technology International.