Page 6 of 11
4. IMPLICATIONS OF A SPACE-DERIVED WEATHER PREDICTING SYSTEM
Introduction
IT IS THE BELIEF of atmospheric scientists that advances in meteorological theory and practice will eventually permit world-wide, reliable, long-range forecasts at least a season in advance, as well as more precise short-range forecasts and easier identification and prediction of special phenomena such as hurricanes, typhoons, and tornadoes. Properly instrumented rockets, satellites, and perhaps other space probes will yield new kinds of atmospheric and solar data and can provide an extensive and constant reportage of phenomena that now are observed over relatively restricted areas of the globe. However, for the development of an advanced theory and its practical application, the information thus collected must be supplemented by and integrated on a world-wide basis with more conventional data now obtained through low atmosphere, oceanographic, and earth surface observation. 2/ In any case, when better weather predicting becomes possible, a variety of problems and opportunities will confront and profoundly affect many sectors of society around the world. The challenges are social, political, and cultural, as well as economic and legal, and much research is necessary to take advantage of the inherent opportunities and to minimize the problems intimately attached to them.
Estimates differ on the time required to develop a partially space derived general weather theory that will be the basis of major improvements in longrange weather predicting. Some meteorologists believe that full development will take at least a decade and probably longer, given the major theoretical and practical data-collecting challenges faced, as well as the time necessary to accumulate the 80 to 100 temperate zone seasonal data by which a general weather theory can be tested; 3/ however, during this time gradual improvements are expected, though possibly not without reversals in accuracy as different hypotheses are tested. The longer the time, the more likely that, with appropriate research planned and applied, the transitions required to utilize better predictions can be made with a minimum of the disruption usually produced when traditional approaches are confronted with new imperatives.
Other meteorologists believe that significant results may be achieved much more quickly; if good correlation is found between ground-based and spacebased measurements the many years of available ground-based records may permit more rapid testing of general theory. Then too, certain kinds of shortrange predicting -- for instance, forecasts of imminent weather disasters both in this country and in areas never before having access to weather predictions -- may become possible fairly soon by direct inspection, through the use of Tiros satellite-type data, without the development of elaborate theory. Also, once the required ground-based system is established, many nations will for the first time have access to regular forecasts, perhaps not as good as those regularly available in the United States today but far better than they presently have. Should this swifter timing prevail, it is essential that some of the suggested 'research be undertaken with maximum dispatch.
The time needed to develop a weather predicting system partially deriving from satellite observations affects speculations on the implications of that development in another important way. If more precise short-range and seasonal predictions are about two decades away, the activities which now might be seen as most affected by such predictions may themselves be changed in twenty years. Developments in farming technology, synthetic foods, and so on may radically reduce (in western nations at least) the dependency of crops on weather; nuclear power to pump desalinated sea water may alter the dependency of water utilities on rain; many other presently weather-dependent activities, among them tourism and travel, may be altered in significant ways. These matters will be discussed in more detail in the appropriate sections of this chapter. At this point it is sufficient to indicate that many activities for which weather predictions appear now to have great significance may not, in fact, be as weather-dependent by the time greater accuracy in predictions is available.
It is recognized, of course, that, even in the present, for many parts of the world and for many activities improvements in weather predicting (except under such circumstances as forecasts of imminent disasters) would not substantially alter behavior. In some cases the same activities can and would be carried on over a wide range of weather; in others, the weather range is not great enough to alter the pace of activities. This point has special significance in the face of claims that more precise day-to-day prediction would be a universal economic and social panacea. it is not at all clear that much can be done to help the fruit grower when temperatures hover just above freezing or to tell people which street a tornado will come down. 4/ Nor is it clear that with the proliferation of air-conditioning, covered walkways, and so on, better daily predictions will help the consumer or hinder the seller, though seasonal predictions might have important effects.
Weather Control
Many of the matters to be discussed in this chapter would differ in substance and significance if weather control rather than weather prediction were to be realized on a large scale in the next twenty years, However, extensive weather control -- if possible at all -- will depend upon the development of the sophisticated weather theory discussed in this chapter. Therefore, although local fog dispersal or rain-making might be successfully practiced before that time, the period of applied weather control, on the scale frequently fantasized in recent years, is presumed to be more than two decades away and hence beyond the scope of this report. 5/
The role of space activities in weather-control practices as conceived of now is not clear. As for local rain-making, legal problems are being explored as a result of some controversies already produced from the alleged effects of rainmaking, even though the evidence that it has any effects at all is presently in dispute and under study. 6/ Certainly international legal problems would be substantial if rain-making became possible on a scale large enough to disrupt weather in neighboring countries, and thus it would be well to keep an eye on the progress of domestic legal decisions.
It is possible that efforts at disrupting hurricanes and typhoons in their formative stages may be attempted ahead of the presumed time table for a complete weather theory. Methods might include altering ozone levels in the upper atmosphere, possibly by nuclear explosions -- which would involve a number of international cooperation problems. Because the experimental requirements are still vague or unknown, not much rigorous research is possible.
Yet because of the importance of the potential problems, preliminary study is necessary to:
• Examine possible types of international cooperation and participation required to conduct specific weather control experiments.
In general, research in this area must probably wait until the physical requirements of the experiments and their possible undesirable by-products can be clarified. However, since the discovery of means for climate control or large-scale weather control would have profound consequences for international relations, this area of study should not be overlooked completely.
Probable Organizational Prerequisites for Applying Future Weather Observation Capabilities
A variety of organizational and personnel problems will be associated with the development of a system for utilization of weather theory and observations based on data collected world-wide and distributed for various forecast purposes on a similar scale. These will include questions in connection with acquiring, processing, and distributing data, as well as staffing installations with men and machines -- four areas of problems that are well known to present systems of weather study but which will be enormously intensified by the large scale of operations and the new wealth of data meteorological satellites are expected to provide. Yet according to a report of the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences in September 1960:
“There exists at the moment no organization or group in the world that is prepared to exploit fully the new wealth of information that meteorological satellites will certainly provide .... Thus, the huge expenditure of scientific effort, engineering, and finances in meteorological satellites may be largely wasted unless a proper organization is ready to exploit the informational output of the meteorological satellites for the increase of our knowledge and the construction of a sound, theoretical foundation upon which a new order of practical forecasting can be based.,' 7 1
Central to a sophisticated weather system would seem to be (1) a high speed world-wide communications system to receive and transmit data for shorttime predictions, and (2) a further arrangement of communications that would allow for coordinate analysis of simultaneously occurring weather phenomena for long-range prediction. The latter requirement could be met by a large “real time” capacity to communicate data to central computer stations or by a large local data storage capacity with data being “readout” to the central computer facilities at later times. In either case a communications satellite system appears to be necessary for transmitting the quantity and quality of weather data required, from all quarters of the globe as well as from space. Research on the communications requirements for the presentation of global, terrestrial, upper atmosphere, and space data remains substantially undone.
Problems associated with accumulation of data
Establishing and maintaining an international data collecting and reporting network through which terrestrial and satellite data alike can be communicated to a relatively few regional computer centers for correlation and analysis will more or less depend on the interplay of such factors as international law, prevailing modes of behavior, economic considerations, and the availability of international organizations which can rise above the tensions between nations and make provisions for reaping the advantages of such developments.
Eventually, the opportunities for mutual benefit from world-wide weather forecasts might in themselves produce a greater sense of general social interdependence that might lessen international tensions. However, during the period -of development and initial application of an improved weather theory the complexion of the international situation is likely to show the variations that have become so familiar in recent years, with the consequences for the evolving prediction capability also varying: tension could abate somewhat for a short or longer time, making possible cooperative arrangements between nations; the present level of tension could continue, involving the prediction efforts in a taxing alternation of competition and cooperation; or competition could be exaggerated to a point that would seriously restrict the flow of weather data and reduce international reporting of it to an informal and intermittent exchange calculated to have least relevance to military or economic effectiveness.
Motivations for supporting scientific investigations of the magnitude necessary to discover a comprehensive theory of the atmosphere will vary in kind and degree among nations. For instance, even in a world where tensions are minimized, the available capital of each nation will be a critical determinant of whether and to what degree each nation can afford to (1) support its own weather observation and reporting network, or (2) contribute toward the support of an internationally funded and/or administered organization.
Motivations of nations may also be influenced by past arrangements for gathering weather data. (In the Caribbean, for instance, the United States developed the weather observation network bilaterally, providing the necessary installations because most of the nations in that storm-incubating region could neither support nor perform the warning services that were vital to us. 8/) Each nation's vulnerability to, and past experience with, weather extremes may be another critical factor. Important too may be the opportunities to enhance national prestige by making a special contribution to the development and organization of weather forecasting systems. The capacity of the social, political, and economic institutions of each nation to absorb and utilize weather forecasts to avoid injury and loss will undoubtedly play a role; in some circumstances both the leadership and the potential users may see better weather predicting as a threat to and a disrupter of the 9/ social, cultural, or political equilibrium. 9/
Each nation, therefore, will probably have its own, self-assessed, manufactured formulae as the basis for its decision to cooperate or not to cooperate with the maintenance of and participation in a weather reporting network, or to set degrees to which it believes it to be beneficial or possible to contribute. As the requirements for the weather forecasting system clarify it will be appropriate to determine:
• What type of data collecting organization is necessary and what factors are most likely to influence each nation's willingness and ability to participate in the data collecting program.
• The role the United States can play in encouraging participation through its contribution to the development and application of new meteorology.
Although this report is examining the implications of peaceful uses of space activities this cannot be done realistically without noting here that the military implications of weather data will, in many countries, importantly influence decisions about participating in the system. Weather traditionally has been an important factor in conducting conventional warfare. 10/
If in the future there should be limited or conventional warfare among either the great powers or the lesser ones, both local and long-range weather predictions would appear to have such significance as to make decisions about the contribution of weather data a matter of major military consideration in each of the countries involved. 11/ Moreover, detailed knowledge of the weather in specific food-growing areas might permit more effective aggressive utilization of biological and chemical agents intended to destroy crops.
Satellite observation of the density and color of growing areas could give advance information, when combined with foreknowledge of the weather pattern, which would be useful for conducting either military or economic warfare.
It follows that there are a number of military and military-economic factors which might affect the extent to which nations and blocs of nations would cooperate -- or permit international organizations to operate -- regularly or sporadically in providing ground-base weather data. Studies are thus necessary to:
• Determine methods of assessing the positive and negative military and economic consequences of participation in unrestricted weather data collecting and processing, as well as the consequences of varying amounts and frequency of participation.
• Determine the extent to which participation in weather data collecting and processing can be made unrelated to the military and economic warfare contingencies which may face various countries.
• Determine the extent to which weather-dependent requirements for nonmilitary activities are compatible or incompatible with military requirements. What would be the consequences for these non military systems of interruptions or limitations in weather data imposed by military requirements both during peacetime and war time? Under what circumstances should priorities of continuity and completeness of information be assigned to military and when to civilian needs? What can be done to mesh and compromise potential differences? What are the costs and benefits to each of interruption and of compromise? (Some aspects of these matters will be discussed in the sections devoted to prediction utilization.)
Problems associated with data processing
It has been estimated that from six to ten well-staffed, intercommunicating weather data analysis centers would be required to correlate and interpret data pouring in from space and all quarters of the globe, although no thinking beyond speculation has yet been done on such requirements.
The United States, Canada, and the West European nations have by now generally incorporated computer methods into their respective national atmospheric research and meteorological services, with access to either multipurpose computer installations or special meteorological computer centers. The British, Germans, Japanese, and Russians, as of 1958, had such installations. In view of the close relationships of these national governmental meteorological installations to the respective military capabilities, it is unlikely that the weather facilities could be easily detached from their military relationship for incorporation into an international structure or authority in the foreseeable future, barring a major shift in military postures.
National centers, among them the U.S. Weather Bureau's Suitland installation, can and do make significant contributions to international data reporting by exchange of selected data with other nations under United Nations-World Meteorological Organization compacts. Costs of such international reporting are borne by the national weather organization originating the information. 12/ The exchange formula, however , has little relevance to the vast meteorological blanks -- those areas in which no computer centers exist and where even simple observations and reporting are minimal. In the great continental masses of Asia, South America, and Africa, indigenous forecast capabilities, especially for shorter-range forecasts, will depend directly on installations for assessing the continental weather factors as well as on the integration of local data. Such regional computer centersappear necessary to obtain forecasts equal to those now enjoyed in North America.
Research is necessary to determine:
• What type of data processing organization is necessary for the development and use of a more adequate weather theory and observation system, and how should this be distributed throughout the world? What alternative distributions are acceptable in the face of non-cooperation or strong pressures for preferential involvement?
• What the motives for cooperation or non-cooperation are in potentially involved nations. To what extent are these motives transient and to what extent likely to persist? To what extent are they compatible or incompatible with the required operating conditions established by the funding and/or initiating nations? 13/ What can be done economically, politically, etc., to encourage the participation of non-cooperating countries whose cooperation is needed?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of alternate schemes of financing the data processing installations?
Presumably, there will be prestige accruing to the nations which house the computers and problems of balancing technical against political and economic feasibility and desirability of sites may present their own difficulties. Questions will arise concerning the funding and staffing of such facilities; ownership and the related question of assuring uninterrupted service in the face of political, military, and economic pressures must be resolved. The data processing centers may very likely also be the sources which produce regional predictions as well as data for incorporation in local predictions. Therefore, a study should be made to discover:
• How to develop means for minimizing the possibility of distorted regional and local predictions or data output by political, military, or private economic interests. International control, inter national membership in a “bureau of standards” organization, quid pro quo bilateral and multilateral arrangements, and fully automatic predictions should be examined as means of circumventing this difficulty.
Problems associated with data distribution
To the extent that the same facilities are used to collect weather data and to make and distribute weather predictions, the problems already posed in the previous two subsections are also pertinent here. An additional study area is evident at the local level, particularly for regions and areas which have not previously used precise weather predicting.
• Methods need to be developed for translating local long-range and short-range predictions into a meaningful form for those who can benefit from them. This is especially likely to be a challenge in areas unused to sophisticated weather predictions and to assessing their meaning in terms of the complex of factors to be considered in order to make maximum use of the pre diction. (This matter will be considered in more detail, especially in the section on implications for farming.)
A number of research problems apply equally to data collecting, processing, and distribution. Moreover, there are special problems posed for the United States if it is to be the major contributor to the satellite based aspects of the quest for an adequate weather theory. The following questions for investigation are applicable generally to many nations, as well as specifically to the United States and its national and inter-national interests.
• To what extent can quality control problems at all phases of theory development and routine predictions be met by international, national, or private organizations?
• What will be the effects of faulty efforts at precision predictions on political and/or financial support during the theory development stage? Wbat activities can be undertaken to minimize adverse consequences?
• What are the relative advantages and disadvantages economically, politically, culturally, and militarily of international, nation al, or private control of all or parts of the theory development system and, eventually, the weather predicting system? What problems need to be resolved regarding ownership, funding, and staffing of facilities in each of these cases? **
• What are the costs and benefits for a given nation of participating in these efforts? How dependent are these on the immediate or eventual participation of other nations? In particular, what are the domestic costs and benefits of participation and nonparticipation in relation to the possible consequences to a nation's international, military, and economic positions? 14/
Problems associated with staffing a world-wide prediction system
There seems no doubt that a space-stimulated forecasting system will impose new and expanded demands for personnel, both to develop the system and the improved weather theory and to use them. Aspects of the problems thus involved can be illustrated by the present situation in the United States.
The United States’ supply of meteorologists, especially those with a broad scientific background is meager when measured against current demand; the U. S. Weather Bureau, for instance, is hard put to recruit an adequatenumber. Opinions differ on the reasons for the tightness of supply. 15/ Some of it can be ascribed to an absolute shortage, a certain amount of which is related to the very small teaching cadre. 16/ Although thousands of meteorologists were trained during World War II, all but 20 per cent left the field after the war. By 1959 the supply of new students was termed “inadequate to meet even the static needs of the science.” 17 / In 1958 eleven major universities in the United States were offering advanced training (Ph.D.) in meteorology, such as may be required to complete the transformation of the technology into the basic science of the atmosphere. 18/ It is believed that about the same number of advanced training facilities exist outside the United States.
Whether satellite-based weather forecasting systems will require more or fewer highly trained meteorologists is not how known. There is a question too of what breadth of training in meteorology is required to develop and use weather satellite data and the world-wide communications and computer facilities associated therewith. If perfected forecasts are to be attained and effectively presented to the people to whom they can be of use, must training encompass physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, oceanography, geography, and computer techniques -- as well as studies that would make clear the implications and relations of precision predicting to agronomy, entomology, hydrology, architecture, economic geography, finance, economics, sociology, and psychology? 14/
For the countries presently with no weather predicting facilities the problem of recruiting and training personnel is even more intricate. Competing social needs more congruent with traditional perspectives may result in low priorities for the training of meteorologists in the number and at the level required for data accumulation and utilization. Participation may be encouraged, however, if a country perceives that weather predications and the prestige to be derived from contributing to this scientific program are national advantages, and that the technical training necessary for the weather program could stimulate interest in technology for other pressing areas.
In some localities, weather predicting is provided by the facilities associated with airlines and other commercial activities. There might be opportunities to use the facilities for training local personnel and to establish a local predicting capability, after resolving questions of funding and jurisdiction.
It may be that automatic equipment can be substituted for personnel in the data accumulation, processing, and distribution phases of theory development and application, although it is not yet clear how much of the predicting can be done automatically and how much will require the interpretive capacities of man. Local predictions now involve to a greater or lesser extent the familiarity of men with local weather vagaries. Whether or not machines can learn to consider these vagaries or whether it is worth while using machines even if they can do so is yet to be determined. 19/ The alternative approaches must be considered, from the standpoints of actual costs and of the political and cultural advantages and disadvantages of both.
Finally, personnel will need to be trained to convey the meaning and utility of weather predictions to those who can benefit from them. Even in countries with a western scientific tradition, long-entrenched operating methods are frequently difficult to overcome; in non-western countries the difficulties are much greater. Since the effective use of long-range and short-range predictions will involve complex judgments of a variety of contingent factors, those personnel who do convey the information will have to have special training. Presumably, they must be intimately familiar with local customs and perspectives (especially those related to weather forecasting folklore) and with the complex of concepts and contingencies involved in the technology of prediction utilization. 20/
In view of all the foregoing problems, research would seem desirable to ascertain:
• How the required attributes and numbers of personnel may be designated sufficiently in advance to have them available when needed for utilizing satellite-based data. 21/
• What should be the curriculum content for those who will participate primarily as theory builders? As predictors? For those who will translate predictions meaningfully for various publics?
• What facilities, methods, and incentives need to be developed to train indigenous personnel, especially in the undeveloped areas? How can this training be used to advance the general social needs of the countries involved? What methods can be developed for selecting, training, and using “weather interpreters” appropriate for different culture contexts and utilization needs?
• What especially useful functions can be performed specifically under international, national, and commercial auspices in the recruiting, training, and utilization of personnel?
Weather Forecast Utilization Implications
To better appreciate the implications of an improved weather prediction system, it is worth discussing briefly what is meant by a “more accurate” forecast. For example, the accuracy of a forecast can be described objectively in statistical terms that are concerned with both the per cent of correct predictions and the precision of each prediction -- the latter factor drawing attention to the amount of deviation permitted before the prediction. is defined as “wrong.” The variability in wrong and right predictions becomes important in defining the criteria of forecast reliability.
For the individual forecast user, however, perception of “accuracy” is likely to be a subjective process that involves personality and culture, as well as a reaction to the practical consequences of a wrong or right prediction. In general, in an environment, such as the United States, of fairly reliable predictions, people will tend to term a weather bureau accurate when experience has demonstrated that its predictions more often than not could have been useful and important to act upon. Nevertheless, even in the United States and much more so in countries unaccustomed to an established predicting system, whether or not people will act in response to a forecast depends on what they perceive the consequences of action or non-action to be, and this varies with the society, the individual personalities, the activities to which the prediction is applied, and the degree of exposure to predictions.
It is likely that only gradually will the predictions of an improved weather system -- and especially the long-range forecasts -- become highly reliable. Hence, there will probably be a period of considerable uncertainty as to whether it is worth the economic and social costs to gain the benefits. Leadership and user behavior can be expected to vacillate, especially in view of the attitudes touched on briefly in the foregoing paragraphs. Thus, realistic estimates of the costs compared to the returns from various levels of forecast accuracy will depend on a much deeper understanding than pertains at present of how specific potential user groups behave when given alternatives based on different levels of probability. Essentially, weather forecasts provide lead-time during which remedial or exploitive action can be taken when weather conditions are expected to require some departure from ordinary or average provision. Whether or not there is need or motivation to depart from ordinary practices depends on the efforts and rewards involved, and these in turn are related to available technological, social, and psychological alternatives on the one hand and to culture-bound perspectives and interests on the other. Therefore research is necessary to learn;
• How various groups of people and important individual decision: makers decide at what subjective and objective probability levels to take action or refrain from it. What factors affect these estimates in different societies and in different institutions?
• To what extent are these factors compatible or incompatible with attainable weather forecast capabilities for given levels of cost and effort?
• What methods can be used to make subjective estimates more responsive to the “real” factors affecting payoff?
Before the implications of forecasting for specific activities are discussed a few speculations are apropos about some broader if more diffuse implications. If the time comes that long-range predictions based on a worldwide network of facilities and computers are realized, they might engender changed attitudes toward more than the weather. The demonstrated advantages of elaborate computer nets for making certain kinds of decisions (in contrast to private estimates of luck, odds, etc.), may encourage experiment with other types of world-wide decision making and planning based on computer facilities. Thus the implications of the weather satellite could include the assets and liabilities of the “computer society,” with its potentials for making man both more and less than his machines. 22/
The range of human undertakings that are presently weather-dependent or weather-sensitive is very broad. It includes directly dependent industries, such as agriculture, public utilities (especially water and water-generated electric power,-which are doubly dependent), fuel manufacture and distribution, recreation and tourism, transportation, and storage facilities for commodities. Industries that are secondarily, but significantly, affected by weather variation include finance, insurance, farm machinery, marketing and distributive services, merchandising and advertising, etc. A number of other activities might become weather-dependent if predictions were to become more long-range and more precise. Medical needs and hospital emergency cases, for example, are to some extent correlated with weather; should the present shortages in hospital facilities and medical personnel persist, foreknowledge about the weather might permit more efficient utilization of resources.
In all these cases estimating the consequences of better forecasting will be a complex matter because of the interplay of many factors. The buyer's comfort may be the seller's discomfort, as weather bureau experience with the “Discomfort Index” illustrated. 23 / One industry's savings in overtime might be another's loss of extra purchases. And long-range predictions indicating persistently poor weather might stimulate confusing population shifts in farming and tourist areas.
If plans for the development of a world-wide forecast capability are to be related to the benefits to be expected from such a capability, research is clearly necessary to:
• Determine the activities that will be most advantaged or disadvantaged by varying amounts of improved forecasts. Here it is necessary to consider the time at which improved forecasts are expected to be realized and the technological and social contingencies which may affect the degree of weather-dependence. In particular, legal, political, economic, and cultural factors must be considered for their influence on the advantages and disadvantages of long and short range forecasts.**
Implications for product raisers 24/
To the extent that ground facilities are expanded in the quest for weather knowledge, areas not accustomed to good short-range forecasts may soon acquire them, along with the problems and opportunities they will present. However, as noted earlier, a world-wide, long-range, forecast capability may not be available for at least ten to twenty years, during which the face of problems seen now could change radically. In that interim, other technologies will be advancing, with profound consequences for agriculture, fishing, fiber raising, and herding -- and the world's population will be growing.
Population pressure may require that all available marginal food raising areas be exploited to the fullest; in this case, weather forecasts may help to indicate the advantages and disadvantages of planting a particular crop for a particular season. But population pressures could just as possibly stimulate the development of food manufacture by such techniques as synthetic photosynthesis or algae-growing. Harvesting of the sea may add substantially to the world's food supply. Economic desalination methods, aided and abetted by massive irrigation systems perhaps utilizing nuclear energy powered pumps, may eliminate the threat of drought in many food growing areas. Techniques of growing crops under plastic (with or without hydroponic methods) may multiply the yield from areas with fairly stable weather, so that careful application of long-range forecasts for food production purposes could become unnecessary in these areas. 25/ In general, however, these are problematical developments, of uncertain time schemes. Even should they come about soon, improved weather information would still have meaning for many regions of the world.
To put the predictions to maximum use will require a shift from traditionoriented methods of food raising and of assessing the meaning of forecasts. Among peoples living in essentially similar climates, traditional cropgrowing rhythms may differ widely and specific groups might therefore respond very differently to suggestions that planting dates or the succession of crops be altered. Planting, even in a country with one commercial crop, is not an isolated activity; all kinds of plantings -- and other activities -- are bound together by the mesh of tradition. 26/
Operational problems having to do with international crop planning and distribution will arise during and after the transition and will need solving if routine and efficient national and international food raising activities are to use the improved forecasts efficiently. The shift from transition to routine will most likely be an uneven process -- accelerated in countries which can make the most use of scientific forecasts and slower in those countries which may find the forecasts an added complication in their personal, national, and international activities.
In all of what follows in this chapter, it must be appreciated that inclination, ability, and direction of change are intimately related to the culture patterns of the society involved, and that what seems “reasonable” and “worth while” to one group may not seem so to another. Almost every private and government organization which has tried to introduce changes in ideas or behavior into cultures other than its own -- and indeed on occasion its own also -- has been faced with complex and often refractory problems. 27/ This is particularly true when the activities involve farmers, fishermen, and others “close to the land.” 28/ The following discussion is based on the assumption that preliminary research is necessary to:
• Determine the extent to which the requirements for using science based forecasts are compatible with the perspectives and behavior of those who will directly use the ideas or methods and of those at higher levels who must approve the ideas or methods for use.
Among factors of special interest with regard to food raising methods and ideas are: the degree of acceptability of scientific statements as a basis for action; existing methods for making long-range forecasts; attitudes toward shifting the customary rhythms of crop-processing behavior, growing alternative crops, and eating alternative crops; how directions or advice are taken from higher echelons; and what the definition of “qualified authorities” is. 29/ **
• Develop and apply means for overcoming incompatibilities (as discovered in the above) with minimum conflict and disruption. Particular attention should be given to determining rates of introduction of innovation as well as what should be introduced. Worthy of special study are means and methods of introducing preparatory programs intended to encourage, before the day of accurate forecasts, states of mind and knowledge compatible with the opportunities provided by a forecast capability. 30/
Long-Range Forecasts
If farmers, herders, fiber growers, etc., know of the forecast and understand its implications for their farms and their crops, the following major sorts of responses could be expected and should be examined.”/
Depending upon such societal factors as population pressure to cultivate climatically marginal land and the capacity of the community to provide alternative uses for labor and capital, there could be significant additional commitment or withdrawal of acreage from cultivation in response to exceptionally good or bad seasonal forecasts. There could also be significant shifts in kinds of crops planted, in relation to forecast minimum or optimum climatic conditions. When a seasonal forecast is unfavorable, commitment to variable costs could be curtailed at the season's start to restrict losses.
Complete withdrawal of acreage (voluntarily or under state edict) would probably be a tactic limited to those lands originally put under cultivation against long climatic odds, and to those occasions in which forecasts indicate a high probability of lethal weather conditions at critical stages of crop development, such as a prolonged drought beginning at germination time. 32/
The northern Canadian wheat periphery, the Russian “new lands,” and the Iceland margins are examples of areas where forecasts of total disaster would not strain credulity, and where complete withdrawal of acreage might follow. 33/
The consequences might well differ depending on the capabilities of the nation to utilize its farm population for other activities. The USSR, for instance, has opened up the Siberian lands, moved in population, made enormous social investment in schools, consumer distribution, hospitals, etc., against odds that only two crops out of five would yield successful harvests.
With the recurrence of such odds the existence of accurate forecast capability might make it economic to develop a supplementary industry, in which the labor not employed in agriculture during forecast bad years could be utilized, thus keeping the major portion of the labor force on site and protecting the social investment in community facilities.
In areas where population pressures and traditional orientations in farm communities make it unlikely that alternative labor utilization would be feasible without extensive shifts in values and social organization, leadership would be faced with the problem of whether or not to use the weather forecast. With sufficient incentive a government could decide to keep the information from its farmers, although it would run the risk of having the information reach them in some roundabout and possibly internationally upsetting way.
The readiness with which the extreme decision, to plant or not to plant -- or even the less extreme decisions of what and when to plant -- might be taken would probably vary with the size and structure of the agricultural system and with the circumstances of the farmers. The farmer whose fixed investment in land and equipment represents a very high proportion of his total resources might be pushed to run longer risks with the weather in hopes of getting even a small return on his fixed costs, especially if there is no available alternative income source. A corporate farm with cash reserves might find it easier to shift capital, equipment, even labor to another more favorable forecast region, or to dip into reserves, rather than waste cash. Subsistence farming, the most prevalent form of agriculture in underdeveloped portions of the globe, would probably attempt to operate under any weather circumstances, as always, if left to itself -- which it may not be if better forecasts make better national planning for improved agriculture possible to governments.
The substitution of alternative crops and the use of additional techniques, such as irrigation, more intensive dry farming, etc., would probably be more widespread than the extreme measure of withdrawing land from cultivation. Such adjustments, however, are hardly less exacting in the social accommodations they require, among which might be the following:
(1) The motivation to use knowledge of possible alternative crops and their critical climatic and ecological limits, as well as of any specific husbandry involved and the equipment it requires.
(2) Access to capital to assist in shifting crops or to invest in major losspreventers such as smudging equipment, the foddering and sheltering of cattle through snowy winters, installation of temporary irrigation equipment, temporary withdrawal of land to fallow, etc.
(3) A market structure receptive to crop substitutes.
(4) Flexible consumer tastes.
There are clearly many difficult and subtle alternatives and problems that need to be examined in detail. if nations and their farming populations are to benefit from scientific long-range forecasts and use them to the fullest agricultural advantage, answers are needed to such broad areas of questions as the following:
• Who will plan alternative strategies, for nations unfamiliar with these problems, to help them cope with the consequences of forecasts? What planning criteria will be used?
• How is the forecasting agency to insure, using whatever social apparatus is provided by the cultures of the various nations, that forecasts reach the agricultural decision makers, be they individual or corporate farmers, U. S. style, or peasants and landlords, Asian style?
• If the indicated response to unfavorable seasonal forecasts is withdrawal of acreage, what alternative uses for mobile factors, but especially for labor, would be available and known to the decision makers? If alternatives do not already exist, can they be economically created and accepted by the farm culture? In a predominantly subsistence farm system, what imports of food into the region would be necessary to carry over bad years? What food reserve system will be necessary to prevent acute hunger or famine, especially in areas where population increase ordinarily keeps the population at the margin of hunger?
• If shifts in kinds of crops and farming techniques are the course of action indicated, the following questions must be resolved by research and the findings absorbed by potential users:
(1) What alter native crops would be successful under the weatherconditions forecast?
(2) What new and special methods would be involved in raising asuccessful crop? How can these methods be imparted to the farmers?
(3) What equipment, or special support (irrigation, stock protection,etc.), would be involved in adjusting to the predicted weather conditions?
(4) How can the alternative crop or crops be marketed and consumedindigenously, and in what quantities and at what price?
(5) If international, bilateral, and multilateral marketing operationsare involved, what formally negotiated quantity and price limitations would govern? How can rigidities in consumption and in marketing arrangements -- such as quotas, price fixing, lack of storage facilities -- be adjusted to meet other production situations?
(6) How can consumer habits be altered, especially if a traditional dietstaple is involved?
In the United States and the developed economies of West Europe for more than a generation governmental action has been taken on behalf of agriculture. In the United States, the federal government has set production quotas, price supports, and special credit terms, has subsidized “conservation” practices, maintained “parity” of farm prices, and managed international market operations and surplus disposals and gifts abroad. 34 1 In nations that are predominantly agricultural, international marketing aspects have become a major area of governmental intervention in the competitive scheme of things, with block selling and trade treaty arrangements negotiated with governments of buyer nations.
To the degree that governments thus enter into agricultural decision making, long-range weather forecasts will involve governmental as well as individual decisions. Governmental responses might include such policies as government-guaranteed, weather-related, credit provisions; farmer education in new husbandry; crop insurance to provide financial reserves for the withdrawal of land; storage schemes to carry over supplies in subsistence agricultural systems; renegotiation of international quotas, to allow international marketing and significant increases of production substitutes; international granary reserve schemes to provide for emergency supplies to areas with serious crop failures.
The possibility of the same bumper crops being produced by competing regions in seasons of most favorable weather forecasts requires attention. International arrangements devised to meet the complication should consider not only the economics of the situation but also the importance to the cultures of the involved regions of such matters as rivalry, delayed returns, substitute crops, and the like.
The effect of changes in agricultural production on commercial dealings in commodities is another potential problem area of concern to governments. Because of the many intangibles involved, this report has not attempted to speculate about what the specific impact might be, but the matter merits study.
The range of governmental responses touched on above ought to be further identified and assessed. Research efforts should include exploration of the following:
• The various mechanisms -- private, governmental, international for balancing agricultural production with demand which could act in relation to the overages or underages in supply that might result from long-range forecasts, taking into account factors that will influence the estimated demand (i.e., population, dietary habits, standards of living, etc.). Especially relevant here is the international stockpiling concept for those areas where the pressure of future population levels living at bare subsistence standards will result in famine, if unfavorable weather causes even relatively slight reductions of food supplies. 35/
• The effect of foreknowledge about weather an commercial dealings in agricultural commodities. This may involve a review of the whole history of trading in basic commodities.
• The degree to which an international food reserve fund might supplement or serve the purposes of commodity reserves, to achieve the stabilization and flow of agricultural commodities.
• The possible devising of interregional or international storage, with similar production patterns but located in areas likely to be subject to different weather patterns in a given year.
Almost any adaptation to the lead time provided by long-range weather forecasts will require rapid access to financial resources to implement preventive or exploitive action. It would appear then that financial institutions, public or private, would bear the first brunt of indicated adaptation. If so, the history of United States agricultural credit policy indicates that the credit structure to support rapid regrouping of agricultural forces will be a focal point for great economic and political pressure In the underdeveloped countries, where the financial resources of individual farmers or farm undertakings are least adequate, the stability of political systems might very well be threatened by a failure to make adequate credit arrangements to enable agriculture to respond to such forecasts -- if the farmers have access to the forecast and wish to take advantage of it.
Research is necessary then on: 36/
• Means for anticipating the need for and providing financial support in response to weather forecasts, both short and long range.
Short-Range Forecasts
The opportunity to use improved short-range forecasts -- deriving from a combination of Tiros satellite-type observations and local ground-based facilities similar to those in the United States today -- will very probably become reality long before the time table of long-range forecasts is achieved. Highly accurate, well-communicated, 7-to 30-day forecasts would allow farmers to take advantage of short-run weather phases (planting on days of the best temperatures for germination, just before rains, etc.) and reduce losses by offsetting unfavorable weather phases (short delays in planting to escape late frosts, rushed harvests to avoid severe storms, etc.), thus contributing significantly to reduced risks and optimized yields. 37/ The highly specific uses of medium-range and short-range forecasts (decisions to spray or not to spray, to build levees or tornado shelters, or to evacuate) place great emphasis on communication and interpretation of forecasts to highly specific publics. Opportunities for improvements in food raising, for instance, will be relatively greater in precisely those areas which have had little experience with scientific prediction and therefore have the greatest adjustment to make to its interpretation. There is an obvious need for personnel -- part agronomist, part meteorologist -- who can translate the forecasts into the action terms of the farmer, fisherman, or herder. 38/
If the individual user is to adapt quickly enough to the forecast, some type of flexible financial arrangement will probably be needed to provide capital resources. Corporate (or collective) agriculture with internal financing, for instance, would be likely to have the necessary financial ambidexterity.
Although many of the problems to be investigated in regard to long-range forecasts will also apply in some degree to the use of short-range data, other very specific research needs to be done for the latter's use. It will be necessary to:
• Provide training and utilization methods for personnel who will have the task of teaching and informing forecast users not familiar with the concepts for application of short-range forecasts. Among factors to be considered are the cost and benefits of using indigenous personnel.
• Develop a correlative indoctrination and training program for fore cast users covering concepts, equipment, and procedures.
• Develop a program for supplying the equipment necessary to take advantage of the forecasts; questions of funding, ownership, accessibility, and the phasing of all of these in terms of the above must be studied.
Implications for tourism and related institutions
The degree of long-range forecast reliability required to influence the travel and recreation plans of vacationers would probably be significantly lower than for undertakings where responsiveness is limited by the necessity to cover fixed costs. In situations where the over-all supply of tourist facilities is in approximate equilibrium with demand, therefore, the tourist and recreation industries might well be among the sectors of the economy subject to the greatest forecast-inspired volatility in demand. The possible impact of seasonal forecasts of exceptionally good or bad weather would be especially important to those areas, regions, or nations in which seasonal -tourism and recreation are major industries, such as Florida, the Riviera, and the ski regions in Canada, New England, Switzerland, Italy, and France.
Accurate short-range (weekly or monthly) predictions would probably have very noticeable effects on short-term tourism and recreation -- industries that have always been subject to the hazards of sporadic demand. If the effect of the forecasts was to concentrate demand on certain areas at certain periods of time, cooperative arrangements might be prompted among hotels, motels, resort area chambers of commerce, etc., to redirect and spread the foreseen demand over the widest possible range of establishments in good forecast areas. The effort might include rescheduling and even repricing of transport facilities.
Most tourists and vacationers have traditionally taken their chances with the weather. Whether or not they will continue to do so in significant numbers when predictions are more precise and forecasts are for a season ahead depends on a number of institutional factors which are altering now and may alter more in the future. If present leisure trends continue, along with population growth, the demand at all times on tourist facilities might be sufficient to make differences in demand as a function of weather forecasts economically trivial. 39/
Research will be desirable to determine from the consumer's standpoint:
• What factors determine time and place of recreation and vacation decision making, and, in particular, how relatively important are weather and weather forecasts to the making and altering of recreation and tourism plans?
• If weather appears to be a major factor in such decisions, are there means for altering the institutional and personal context so that the adverse consequences of forecasts can be mitigated though greater flexibility at the consumer end of the tourist and recreation industry?
Under some conditions, owners and entrepreneurs of tourist facilities may seek ways to reduce losses resulting from forecasts. The extension of the principles of weather insurance needs to be explored. Undertakings with greater capital resources might select additional sites with markedly different climatic patterns, in order to assure their customers of finding good weather at one site or another. Special transportation rates and schedules might also be a device to attract customers to alternate facilities. Lead time from advanced forecasts could be used to advertise non-weather-sensitive attractions; the Edinburgh Festival, for example, provides an incentive to visit Scotland in August, regardless of the weather.
In summary, it seems probable that the industry will be threatened with even more instability than it is now subject to, if seasonal forecasts result in pyramiding of demand in good forecast areas during a given period of time and falling off of demand in poor forecast areas. How seriously the recreation entrepreneurs, especially those with high fixed costs, take weather forecasts, accurate or not, has been demonstrated by their general sensitivity to the summer “Discomfort Index” and, in the Florida resorts, to cold weather 40/ warnings.
The threat could be greatly reduced by planning based on study of the problems potentially involved. Research could be undertaken to determine:
• What would be the major modes of readjustment in the tourist industry required at local, regional, and national levels as a result of weekly, monthly, and seasonal forecasts? To be considered would be alternative uses for and the mobility of capital, managerial and other skills in the travel and recreation industry; applications of the insurance principle to redistribute weather risks concentrated on entrepreneurs by the extended forecast capability; organizational mechanisms which would permit a dispersal of over or under demand; and relationships with the transportation and communication industries to cope with local short-time peaks and drops as well as region al seasonal peaks and drops.
• What would be the effects of the above readjustments on service standards, and how could these be meshed with changing expectations in the consumer?
• What might be the role of public policy in ameliorating the difficulty’s and meeting the demands of both the consumer and the producer of tourism and recreation, given the government's role in providing the weather forecasts?
• What are the international implications associated with the impact of national forecasts on international tourism? How is this situation altered if forecast capability is under international rather than national auspices?
Implications for transportation
Within the next twenty years, certain transportation methods and facilities in the major industrial nations may have altered to an extent that will make them much less subject to the hazards of weather variation than at present.
For example, the application of advanced techniques -- perhaps based on navigation satellite and space-stimulated guidance devices -- could reduce the weather-dependency of aircraft, ships, and trains to the vanishing point under all but physically destructive weather circumstances. Similar changes in highway transportation methods are difficult to foresee -- short of the development of techniques so radically different as to push the old methods into obsolescence. In any case, motor and rail travel now appear to be more dependent on available resources to cope with the consequences of bad weather than on knowledge that bad weather is coming. (E.g., the number of snowplows in a given area or the design of snow-proof electric railroad engines is more often a matter of budgetary convenience than of weather experience.)
In less-developed regions and nations where large segments of the society and the economy have never been dependent on a complex, smooth-running, transportation system, the effects of tie-ups or slowdowns due to weather are more difficult to assess. However, these are the areas where the seasonal swings of weather have for generations stimulated some shifting of transportation loads to means less disrupted by the expected weather. Therefore the advent of highly accurate forecasting -- once it is accepted as such -- could without too much difficulty enhance custom into organized planning, with the further consequence of improvement of transportation schedules and methods.
Freight transportation systems of all varieties, in the highly advanced areas of the world as well as in the underdeveloped regions, should find it useful to estimate-precisely and well in advance the hauling demands their clients will make. Foreknowledge of the probability of bumper crops, reduced coal demands, or a late ice break in inland shipping regions, for example, should permit better allocations of transportation, although cost and benefits consequences of better allocation are not immediately evident.
At the appropriate time in the development of local or regional weather forecasting capability, research will be desirable to:
• Discover appropriate methods by which cultures unfamiliar with utilizing scientific weather data might apply it to improve their transportation facilities and scheduling.
• Determine what kinds of transportation and what types of operating arrangements are likely to become especially dependent on better predictions. What would be the consequences of forecast interruptions (as might occur if military interests resulted in withholding of weather information)? How might the adverse consequences be overcome or compensated for?
• Develop the methods and data permitting cost, and benefits analyses of better allocation of transportation resources, and, in the light of this, determine what ancillary facilities, resources, and organization would be needed to permit the transportation industry and its clients to take maximum advantage of the forecasts. 41/
• Establish the nature of continuing methods and organization to supply this information to users, and to revise it in the light of changing factors in national and international operations.
Implications for water and fossil fuels and power utilization
Over the next twenty years conventional fuels -- coal, gas, oil, and dammed water -- will probably continue to be the main sources of power for industrial nations, although nuclear power may be possibly used in special circumstances, as in India, for example. 42/ Therefore, since weather will continue to play a large part in fuel stockpiling strategies as well as in consumption rates and patterns -- barring world-wide applications of major improvements in transforming fuel to power -- the implications of better forecasts for the management of power resources and related activities need careful examination.