Since March, lockdown has been enforced by countries across the world to control the spread and save lives. 2 Materials and Methods 2.1 COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts on Aircraft Meteorological ObservationsĬoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) broke out globally during February 2020 and became a global pandemic in March 2020 (WHO, 2020). Based on scientific evidences, we provide suggestions to minimize the impact of global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, on weather forecasting in future. We also present the difference in impacts over different regions. In this study, we quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on weather forecasts by verifying global weather forecast against reanalysis data, which is the best available estimate of the atmospheric state. Therefore, a quantifying understanding of the potential impacts of the pandemic on weather forecasting and development of mitigation approaches are critical for protecting current living standards and economic activity. The lack of aircraft data may become worse as the COVID-19 pandemic develops further and the associated lockdown extends, and this will lead to larger impacts on weather forecasting and impose an additional economic cost on top of that from the pandemic itself. WMO, ECMWF, and scientists expressed concerns over the impacts to the public regarding the possibility of unreliable weather forecasts (ECMWF, 2020 Viglione, 2020 WMO, 2020). Lack of critical aircraft observations could imperil the weather forecast. This eliminates about 50–75% of aircraft observations globally during March to May 2020, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO WMO, 2020), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF ECMWF, 2020) and the Aircraft Meteorological DAta Relay program ( ). According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, by the end of March 2020, more than 20 commercial airlines have stopped flights entirely and about 12 airlines stopped all international flights. However, availability of these critical aircraft observations has reduced remarkably since March 2020, resulting from the global lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Assimilation of aircraft observations exerts the largest improvements in global weather forecasts compared with each individual category of conventional observations (exclude satellite), both for long-term average and for individual events (Ota et al., 2013 Petersen, 2016). Aircraft observations from commercial airlines around the world are a critical component of global meteorological observations. The number of meteorological observations has increased steadily over the past decades globally, and their assimilation has greatly improved model initial conditions and forecasts (Kanamitsu, 1989). The accuracy of forecasts is largely dependent on the quality of initial conditions used in numerical weather prediction models. Weather forecasts play an essential part in daily life (Böcker et al., 2013), agriculture (Calanca et al., 2010), and industrial activities (Teisberg et al., 2005) and have great economic value (Zhu et al., 2002). The impact over Western Europe is buffered by the high density of conventional observations, suggesting that introduction of new observations in data-sparse regions would be needed to minimize the impact of global emergencies on weather forecasts. This could handicap early warning of extreme weather and cause additional economic damage on the top of that from the pandemic. Forecasts over remote regions are also substantially worse during March to May 2020 than 2017–2019, and the deterioration increases for longer-term forecasts. We find a large deterioration in forecasts of surface meteorology over regions with busy air flights, such as North America, southeast China, and Australia. Here, we verify global forecasts against reanalysis to quantify the impact of the pandemic. However, global lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic (March to May 2020) has eliminated 50-75% aircraft observations and imperiled weather forecasting. Assimilation of meteorological observations from aircraft improves forecasts greatly. Weather forecasts play essential parts in economic activity.
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