Climate and Weather Intelligence
An Undervalued Asset for Climate Adaptation, Resilience and Security
This is a response paper I wrote during my BA, the prompt was to identify a climate-impacted resource with the potential to be weaponized and write a brief on it.
Key Takeaways
Climate and weather intelligence data collection and analysis is an informational resource of urgent concern and import in global, national and local planning and response to the changing climate.
Insights gleaned from climate and weather intelligence have far-reaching implications for a wide range of domains and inadequate information will exacerbate the negative impacts of climate change by detracting from the adaptive capacities of decision-makers.
Wealthy states have an advantage over less developed states in both the observational and information technology realm for climate and weather intelligence analytics. Wealthy states can accommodate global needs in the IT infrastructure realm, but cannot do so in the observational data collection infrastructure realm without significant investment.
This information space creates a realm for potential information warfare, where withholding access to information for profit or sabotage may occur: this nascent informational resource may be subject to competitive, non-collaborative practices that can have communal and targeted negative effects.
Background
The need for advanced weather and climate forecasting to inform decision-making is at the forefront of global scientific concern as the international community grapples with the climate crisis. This informational resource has developed into a highly specialized intelligence industry- with technical strategies of information collection and analysis deploying advanced meteorology, supercomputing, satellite and remote sensing technologies being required for the best predictions. As the climate crisis treks along, continued scientific analysis of climate conditions must be perpetually implemented and revised to accommodate the constant changes. This perpetual need for the analysis and reanalysis of climate and weather data is technologically intensive and requires continued innovation and investment. Climate and weather forecasting inform decision-making in an expansive array of global, national and localized resource management questions: such as water management, agricultural practices and extreme weather risk assessment and prediction. This information space also requires global data-sharing and technological cooperation for the best informational outcomes.
Overview of Climate and Weather Forecasting
Climate and weather forecasting has been utilized to support human civilization dating back to 650BC Babylonians, developing over time from an astrological and folkloric framework into the high-tech network of technologies and multidisciplinary science that it is today. The purpose of weather and climate forecasting is to accommodate weather and climatic circumstances in decision-making to improve public safety, safeguard quality of life and crucial economic activity, as well as protect the ever-threatened natural environment.
Climate and Weather intelligence collection and analysis infrastructure is comprised of two primary components: the observational ecosystem which collects the input data and the IT ecosystem which is composed of technologies such as communication systems, data storage systems and software which analyzes and interprets climate data. Advancements in observational systems over the last few decades have been significant, including the development of space-based measurement systems using lidar and radar technology and remote sensing such as infrared and microwave technologies. There has been a perceived lag in the further development and widespread use of these technologies in the collection ecosystem due to the significant initial cost of building and continued costs of maintaining observational networks.
The immediacy of Climate Intelligence Infrastructure and Tech:
The necessary infrastructure, planning and establishment of data-sharing and collection practices require foresight that must be enacted with immediacy in anticipation of the heightened need for climate and weather intelligence. This information space requires highly advanced technologies and the bridging of tech infrastructure, talent and data from the public and private sectors. The wide range of stakeholders and contributors in climate and weather forecasting requires significant administrative capacity expansion on the part of governments, as well as collaboration both across departments within a nation and among nations..
Extensive Domains of Impact
The intelligence gleaned from climate and weather forecasting science is a crucial informational asset in the maintenance and management of various domains: navigational, atmospheric, oceanic, land surface, agricultural and hydrologic. With regards to agriculture, for example, climate information and analytics are needed for annual and seasonal planning that is necessary to adapt resource management and usage operations to climate conditions. The lack of sufficient climate and weather forecasting exacerbates pressures on global agriculture economies and yields. Not only are insights gleaned from climate and weather intelligence needed to inform shifts in regular resource-management and use practices; but they are also necessary for disaster preparedness and response.
The Future of Climate and Weather Intelligence
Intelligence Addiction
The global need for climate and weather forecasting can be likened to a resource addiction, since the sustained need for updated climate and weather forecasts with yet more data is continuous as conditions change dramatically and thus do projected patterns of rainfall, drought, flooding, etc.
Shifting Analytics Technologies
The development of methodologies for analyzing weather and climate data using machine learning and causal inference will overtake current weather and climate modeling techniques. Past and current Weather and Climate modeling techniques are expensive, time-consuming and too rigid compared to machine learning which offers flexible methods that learn and adapt to variation in complex climate data which consists of many shifting interdependent variables and subcomponents.
Localized Predictions
As technologies evolve, analyses will have increasingly sophisticated and localized predictive power. An evolution in climate and weather intelligence that will be needed for addressing climate concerns is the development of climate/weather analytical capabilities able to forecast smaller areas of land at faster rates. Today, our most accurate predictions are situated at wider-area units of analysis- such as continental or national average predictions for precipitation patterns, airspeed and temperature.
Security Risks
Cooperative Ineptitude and Technological Imbalance:
For the most successful intelligence collection and analysis, the international system requires robust international cooperation and organization. High-cost technological advancements and infrastructure undergirding climate and weather intelligence positions developed, wealthy nations at a technological advantage. Wealthy, developed nations are more capable of innovations in, for example, computational methods of predictive analysis such as the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Developed nations are also more capable of building and maintaining crucial observational infrastructure. The relative weakness of poorer, less developed nations can be more readily counterbalanced by nations with higher data-analytic capacity: given the mobility of data across computers. In addition to the benefits associated with data mobility, there is a clear second-mover advantage for nations in adopting and using advanced climate intelligence analysis algorithms in that they need not develop the code themselves and this software is likely to be readily shared by the initial developers compared to other intelligence software (which may have the capacity or designed intent of being used for primarily military purposes). However, such counterbalance is not as possible for observational infrastructure- which less developed nations, by and large, relatively lack the public funding to construct, operate and maintain. The lack of global reference stations that collect localized weather and climate data to contribute to the global data-share undermines the effectiveness and accuracy of global climate and weather intelligence.
Kinetic Effects of Inadequate Climate and Weather Intelligence:
With the importance of accurate climate and weather forecasting prediction for climate-adaptive and resilient resource management in mind: marginal inaccuracies of forecasts become more costly to governments, private resource managers and resource consumers more broadly. Failure to sufficiently project climate and weather conditions poses severe economic, public safety and resource management risks. Governments’ and communities’ abilities to conduct climate-accommodating agricultural practices, predict and mitigate the human and infrastructural impacts of extreme weather events, and maintain crucial common pool resources is constrained by their ability to project climate and weather patterns. Failure and inadequacy in climate and weather intelligence will have significant kinetic costs.
Information Warfare:
The possibility of information warfare in climate and weather intelligence poses a security risk. As the climate crisis escalates, so do the costs to economies of subpar resource management/utilization decision-making. As crucial resources, such as water, clean air, and agricultural products are made scarce by the stresses of climate change- resource managers will need increasingly accurate predictions to reduce losses. Since the climate and weather intelligence collection infrastructure exists as a global patchwork of state-owned and private technological infrastructure/analytics: data hoarding, technological noncooperation or data sabotage is a resource costly concern.
Recommendations
“Weather Knows no Borders” Cooperative Framing
The US and the global community must frame climate and weather intelligence as an International Climate Cooperation Opportunity. Under this framework, it ought to be remarked often that communal input for collective gain is necessary for adaptation, resiliency and avoiding severe economic and resource losses at the national level for every single nation. Historically, weather forecasting using meteorological science was one of the first spheres of across-nation data collection and sharing. A revitalization of global standardization efforts and norm formation revolving around making relevant climate and weather data available open source should be pursued at the federal and international levels.
All-Sector, Global Engagement
Even among wealthy nations, the siloed public sectors of individual nations alone cannot sufficiently fund and manifest needed innovations in climate and weather intelligence collection and analysis. Government funding of private, public and academic research and development must take place and engagements of scientists from all sectors from all nations is needed- since we fail to unlock the total potential of science and technology without openly sharing all relevant data and standards.
Addressing Infrastructural Comparative Disadvantages
Wealthy, developed nations should- as well as sharing analytic insights gleaned from their superior data processing technologies- aid poorer nations financially in the construction of observational infrastructure for data collection.