Following the announcement from the National Weather Service (NWS) that it is suspending its weather balloon launches in Kotzebue, Alaska indefinitely due to staffing shortages in the wake of recent DOGE activity, planetary intelligence company, WindBorne Systems, has offered to provide the NWS atmospheric data free of charge to help offset the critical gap that will result from the loss of these observations.
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WindBorne launches their autonomous circumnavigating weather balloons from their Palo Alto headquarters. (Photo: Business Wire)
Currently, the U.S. operates about 100 weather balloon sites, where balloons are launched into the atmosphere to collect atmospheric data that is crucial for producing accurate weather forecasts. The shutdown of even one of these sites will have a devastating ripple effect when it comes to the accuracy of our national forecasts. As DOGE-related budget cuts take hold—and are poised to continue—there is a need for newer technologies to plug the data gaps.
WindBorne, backed by Khosla Ventures, is on a mission to close existing atmospheric data gaps worldwide. They have built a constellation of long duration weather balloons capable of autonomously circumnavigating the globe to collect atmospheric data from some of the earth’s most remote locations, including above oceans, where traditional weather balloons cannot reach.
In light of the recent shut down in Kotzebue, WindBorne is doubling down on its commitment to ensuring critical atmospheric observations remain available by offering to provide free data for 6 months to the NWS to help fill in the data gap that will now exist in western Alaska.
“We are disappointed to learn that NWS staffing shortages will result in the loss of the Alaska radiosonde launch site and the devastating effects this will have on our national forecasts," said John Dean, CEO of WindBorne. “As soon as we heard, we felt called to step in immediately and try to rectify the situation. Innovative solutions like WindBorne’s can meet the government’s data requirements with technology that surpasses what is currently available in terms of efficiency and performance.”
Maintaining data collection in regions like Alaska and the Arctic is critical, as they are notoriously difficult to observe due to extreme environmental conditions, limited communications infrastructure, and high logistical costs.
These regions also play a crucial role in global weather patterns, with the Arctic serving as a "weather factory" that generates systems impacting all of North America. Gaps in high-quality observational data from these areas degrade forecast accuracy across the continent, affecting industries from aviation to marine operations, as well as general safety and crisis planning.
WindBorne is establishing its seventh permanent global launch site in Fairbanks, Alaska, funded by the U.S. Air Force. The site will be fully operational by the end of March.
This is not WindBorne’s first time launching in Alaska. In 2021 and 2022, WindBorne launched 90 of their next-generation weather balloons from Fairbanks, Alaska and Svalbard, Norway in support of the Office of Naval Research’s THINICE campaign. Totaling 358 days of flight time, this represents the largest ever direct sensing campaign of the Arctic Circle, and enabled vital research on sea ice and Arctic cyclones.
WindBorne’s technology offers a cost-effective solution: traditional NOAA weather balloons cost $500 per data profile and stay airborne for only two hours, whereas WindBorne’s high-tech, 4-pound balloons collect magnitudes more data throughout months-long flights at a fraction of the cost. WindBorne is also a vendor of the NWS National Mesonet Program, so the infrastructure that enables the integration of this critical data is already in place.
WindBorne is committed to supporting the weather forecasting community with novel technologies that maintain data quality and the people who depend on accurate predictions for their safety and livelihoods.
About WindBorne Systems
WindBorne is a planetary intelligence company that provides people, governments, and industries with unprecedented environmental data and insights through a global constellation of atmospheric sensing balloons and AI-powered predictions. While others are focused on either marginal aspects of data collection or forecasting, WindBorne is revolutionizing the end-to-end planetary intelligence stack by both tackling the most urgent data gap and dramatically improving AI forecast accuracy and lead times.
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Contacts
Helen Cho
press@windbornesystems.com
