The Pandemic Is Undermining Weather Monitoring | Hakai Magazine
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One after another, the sensors went dark. In normal times, technicians tasked with maintaining the small network of meteorological instruments scattered off the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland could have traveled to fix or replace the defunct devices. But the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant they could only watch in vain as the technology failed, leaving weather forecasters without a handful of important data, including atmospheric pressure measurements. At the start of 2020, this regional network had 12 locations providing data. Because of kaput sensors, that number now stands at just seven.
Emma Steventon, marine networks manager at the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office in Exeter, knew she had to come up with a plan. In June, she and her team sent eight drifting buoys to the port of Liverpool where they were loaded onto a ship and subsequently dropped into the Atlantic Ocean off Ireland’s southwest coast. The spherical buoys, encased in cardboard packaging that breaks down in seawater, soon separated and drifted off into the distance. “This was something new that we’ve not done before,” she says. The buoys, she anticipated, would provide a short-term fix, filling the data gap left by failing sensors. “We were expecting them to be picked up by the currents and be washed ashore within a few months.”
