Adrienne Ma

You're like, oh, it's going to rain today. Or is it?

I guess this just goes to show how much access we have to weather information these days. Weather forecasting has gotten a lot more accurate in the last few decades. It's a multibillion-dollar industry. Companies from tech startups to huge corporations are competing to produce more sophisticated and precise forecasts.

And I'm Adrian Ma. Today on the show, how much is an accurate weather forecast worth? Who should pay for it and who should benefit?

The federal government has officially been in the weather business since 1870. That's when Congress created a National Weather Bureau to collect data and make forecasts. Today, that office is known as the National Weather Service. It's part of an agency called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And then there are lots of businesses that are taking that data, slicing and dicing it, and selling it onward. Keith Sider is a professor of climate science at the College of the Holy Cross, and he's also a senior policy advisor at the American Meteorological Society.

Yeah, for example, think of a utility company that needs to monitor ice buildup on power lines during a winter storm, or an airline that wants to reroute a flight to avoid turbulence, or even a concert promoter that gets an alert to evacuate a stadium during a storm.

So that is one source of tension in the industry. Another one, Keith says, has to do with the flow of weather data. Remember when we said the government is a foundational data source? That's because historically, NOAA and NASA paid for the big weather satellites that collect that information.

The government's new role as both a supplier and a customer of weather data has blurred the lines between public agencies and private sector businesses. But there are examples of the two sides working together. Mary Glackin has been an official at NOAA and an executive in IBM's weather business. She says the aviation industry could be a model.

But moving to a more privatized or market-based model for weather forecasts, it raises questions about whether potentially life-saving information would only be available to people with resources.

This is kind of a wild thing to think about when it comes to potentially life-saving information, right? Like one town has different information than another.

Renato Molina is a professor of environmental and resource economics at the University of Miami. He says an accurate weather forecast definitely meets the criteria for a public good.

That's because when weather forecasts are more accurate, local governments can request federal money for protective measures in advance of a hurricane. They can also issue timely evacuation mandates.

Like besides the text messaging app?

I would have to say the weather app. It's like the first thing that I open in the morning.

You paid $800,000 in tariffs today.

Wow.

You know, until very, very recently, I had not thought about this at all. I just assumed like somebody was beaming it to me from a satellite somewhere.