Funding cuts by the Federal Aviation Administration could compromise the consistency of nearly seven decades of Madison snowfall data, weather experts say.
According to meteorologists from the National Weather Service and UW-Madison, the FAA is considering eliminating its contract with a professional weather observer at Dane County Regional Airport — a move that could disrupt data sets from the city’s official data collection since 1948.
Most airports, including Dane County’s, are fitted with automated weather monitoring equipment that collects information on things such as temperatures, wind speeds and sky conditions. Despite their vast capabilities, automated monitoring systems aren’t able to measure snowfall or the water content of snow, requiring manual readings to be taken.
As a result, the FAA contracts with professional weather observers to monitor equipment and provide supplemental data at many airports around the country. But cuts to non-essential staff have reduced airport weather observers in recent years, with the federal agency passing on the responsibilities to air traffic controllers or abandoning manual data collection at some sites completely.
When the FAA eliminated a weather observer at La Crosse Regional Airport, the Weather Service was forced to canvass the surrounding area to find someone who would take snow readings every six hours at their own home.
But critics of the cuts say that because airport data is so widely distributed and cited, it should be maintained professionally and consistently.
Steven Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at UW-Madison, said he hopes Madison doesn’t end up following La Crosse’s lead because he’s opposed to moving data collection sites.
“Anytime you’re doing record keeping where you want to look at long-term trends, you need a continuous data set,” Ackerman said. “Once you stop doing that — even for a year — you’ve lost the statistical significance and the continuation of that. Even though it seems like a small decision, it actually has big impacts on the data set.
“I recognize that as we look at climate change that is occurring, one of the big things that is changing is the amount of snowfall and the frequency of snowfall. As we go into the next decade and we don’t have that climatology with us, it’s harder to validate what’s really going on.”
In May, the FAA conducted a safety risk management panel to explore the feasibility of having federal air traffic controllers, contracted air traffic controllers or non-federal employees supplement the automated weather monitoring systems. Air traffic controllers already handle those duties at more than 390 airports, according to the FAA.
Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for the FAA’s Central and Great Lakes regions, did not confirm Dane County as one of the airports slated to lose its weather observer, but said in a statement that final decisions haven’t been made for any sites.
“Periodically, the FAA conducts a review to determine if controllers can perform these functions at additional locations to ensure the best use of our fiscal resources,” the statement read. “We are coordinating the next steps internally. No decisions have been made at any facilities about the contract weather observer program.”
Tim Halbach, a warning coordinator meteorologist with the Weather Service’s Sullivan office, said that if the position is eliminated in Madison, the Weather Service will likely look for a snowfall recording site near Dane County Regional Airport.
“If it happens, we’d want to keep that record going if we could. So, if that’s what it came down to, that’s probably what we’d have to do,” Halbach said. “Nothing has been done yet, so we are just kind of in waiting mode to see what happens.”
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