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MrGilbert parent
I remember that during COVID, the weather forecast got noticeably worse. One of the explanations I read was that, because so many planes were grounded, there was far less data for the models available. I‘m not sure which source that was from, though.
willglynn
This was TAMDAR data, which is a self-contained instrument package intended specifically for meteorological observations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAMDAR

Observations definitely fell off a cliff as commercial air travel slowed to a crawl. In terms of impact, though… it turned out not to be a big deal.

> Aircraft reports suffered a 75% decline in numbers from mid-March to mid-April 2020; in May the number started increasing again. Despite the loss of data there is no clear signal in the forecast skill—partly because the skill shows considerable variability on daily, seasonal, and interannual timescales (Figures 3 and 4). …

> …

> Overall, we can find no evidence that the decrease in aircraft observations has handicapped numerical forecasts of extreme weather to an extent large enough to incur significant economic impact.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...

MrGilbert OP
Ah, nice - I learned something new today and ultimately can put that "funfact" to rest.^^

Thanks!

jimbobthrowawy
Glad to hear something's being done with the data from the weather radar most commercial jets have. The thought occurred to me about halfway through reading the blogpost.

I hope that data's available publicly, though likely not as publicly as ADSB broadcasts.

incognito124
Another factor was the rollout of 5G at that same time:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5g-wireless-could...

maven29
It's mostly the US and a few other small markets that even have millimeter wave 5G NR. This is mostly due to the fact that FCC had not wound down analog broadcasts in time, and mmWave/FR2 was the only way to do 5G in the US initially, as lower C-band were not freed up until 2021. Deployments of mmWave exist solely due to the sunk cost of existing equipment and narrow use-cases like stadiums and concerts.

The article predates our current reality where C-band (3.5GHz) is available for 5G

firesteelrain
I don’t remember reading that but I had an ADSB receiver prior to COVID and I watched in real time as the aircraft traffic nearly stopped for months using the the data recorded by my receiver and parsed by FlightAware running on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ - as the world shut down.

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