Weather observations for aviation and community beneftis

By Rick Thoman
Alaska Climate Specialist
Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Preparedness
International Arctic Research Center/University of Alaska Fairbanks

For the past few years, the Nugget each week has published the online reporting status of all the airport weather stations in the region. The importance of the airport weather observations for aviation operations is obvious, but these observations are also vital for search and rescue, general community planning and safety and can be used to adjust computer weather models that are the basis for all forecasts.
This week's graphic shows the active agency weather stations in the region currently operating. All of these weather stations are entirely automated with the exception (until recently) of Nome Airport, and unfortunately report in a degraded mode or not at all too frequently for comfort.
So, how does this impact western Alaska's climate record?
Traditional climate data elements such as daily high and low temperatures, precipitation and snowfall cumulative in nature are quite different than weather observations, which provide an instantaneous snapshot of atmospheric conditions. Another constraint on climate observations is that, to be useful, climate observations need to be nearly complete. A month with climate observations on only half the days of the month has very limited usefulness for climate analysis purposes. Even a few missing days can be critical if significant weather events happen.
For Nome, this happened in March 2021. The automated weather observations system at the Airport failed on March 4 and was not returned to working condition until Match 9. During that outage a severe storm brought blizzard conditions and a lot of snow, with drifts several feet high around town. But because there were no alternate precipitation measurements in Nome, that storm is lost to the climate record and so March 2021, which was at or close to the highest precipitation March in Nome's 119-year climate record is not usable because one big storm was missed.