Introduction

The existing system for sensing, recording, and reporting weather conditions and producing forecasts has been developed mainly in response to demands of specific clients. Weather conditions and forecasts provided for airline navigation and agricultural production management are but two examples. The result is that the system for producing, storing, and disseminating weather data and forecasts has strong historical linkages to the demands of major clients and the sensing and recording technologies available at the time of implementation. Location of first-order stations at airports, the cooperative observer system, frequency of reporting, and the levels in the atmosphere at which data are observed all can be viewed as having a user-based history.

With the advent of new sensing, recording, and reporting technologies, and changing needs of existing clients and the entry of new clients, there has been a growing effort to justify economically the system supplying these services. Weather data and forecasts are produced to a large extent by the public sector and made available at a highly subsidized user cost; that is, the data are public goods. To provide an economic rationalization for the production and dissemination system, it must be shown that the rate of return, or benefit relative to cost, is consistent with that available from alternative employment of societal resources. For this calculation, the relevant cost and benefit concepts are, of course, social, as opposed to private or individual.

The effort to justify economically the weather information system has resulted in a number of research activities and suggested organizational changes.