A systematic economic approach to evaluating public investment in observations for weather forecasting

Observations of the current state of the atmosphere are a major input to production of modern weather forecasts. As a result, investments in observations are a major component of public expenditures related to weather forecasting. Consequently, from both a meteorological and societal perspective, it is desirable to select an appropriate level of public investment in observations. Although the meteorological community has discussed optimal investment in observations for more than three decades, it still lacks a practical, systematic framework for analyzing this issue. This paper presents the basic elements of such a framework, using an economic approach. The framework is then demonstrated using an example for radiosonde observations and numerical weather forecasts. In presenting and demonstrating the framework, the paper also identifies gaps in existing knowledge that must be addressed before a more complete economic evaluation of investment in observations can be implemented.