For as long as mankind has prospered, the weather could bend them to nature’s whims. The weather controls where people can live, what they can do, wear and eat and if people can live at all. With how much the weather and knowledge about it can positively and negatively impact people globally, governments and organizations around the world have done their best to observe the weather and use its data in order to mitigate future weather disasters and other adverse situations. However as this is a global matter different people and organizations have different ideas on how to improve these practices for the future. So in this essay I will discuss and compare what groups and people deemed to be important  in this endeavor.

          The authors of A case study of impacts of an extreme weather system on the Mediterranean Sea circulation features: Medicane Apollo (2021) are Milena Menna, Ricardo Martellucci, Marco Reale, Gianpiero Cossarini, Stefan’s Salon, Guilin Notarstefano, Elena Mauri, Pierre-Marie Poulain, Antonella Galló, and Cosimo Solidoro. All of the  authors reside in Italy and write for the Oceanographic Section of the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics. The 1st purpose of this scientific report is to document the bio geochemical impacts of Medicane Apollo and a cyclonic gyre interacting at the western Ionian Sea and the pre-existing conditions that would cause this to occur. This cyclone struck countries in the Mediterranean coast, resulting in the deaths of 7 people and in damages that cost $245 million. The authors’ stance on this is that this rare phenomenon warrants the need to develop better observational systems in order to better mitigate the damage caused by the weather in the future. The 2nd purpose is to use this report as a way to galvanize the scientific community and policymakers to get together and support the advancement to observational systems that utilize multiple means of observation such as the Argo program.

         The audience of this scientific report is the scientific community. Specifically, scientists that would be interested in the rare interaction between an atmospheric cyclone and a cyclonic gyre and the effects it would have on the Ionian Sea. The rest of the audience consists of meteorologists that work at organizations like the National Weather Service, American Meteorological Society, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and the Italian Meteorological Service. The demographic of the audience ties back into the purpose of the article as in their Discussion section they highlight the limitations of using satélite data to observe the weather.

         The main argument of this scientific report is that there should be improvement to the current observational systems in order to better prepare for future weather events. This can first be seen in the Abstract of this paper where it states that the fact that this Medicane behaved differently from previous cyclones support the idea that there is a need for an observational system that can produce more accurate weather models. This is then elaborated on in the Discussion section, where it highlights several flaws with the use of satellite data, some being that only provide information only at sea surface and some weather like heavy rainfall can contaminate satellite readings. And finally after discussing how they got their data by combining  satellite data and model products, they end this section by expressing their desire for scientists in their community and lawmakers to come together and heavily advocate for increasing the capability and accuracy of future atmospheric forecasts. It is clear that these authors believe that getting more accurate data through improved equipment and techniques is important.

     The authors of A study on the integrity and authentication of weather observation data using Identity Based Encryption are Jung Woo Seo and Sang Jin Lee. Both of the authors reside in Seoul, South Korea and went to school at the Graduate School of Information Security at Korea University.The first reason that this study was made was to highlight the importance of weather information in this day and age, as it plays an important role in maintaining the nation’s economy and security. It also plays an important role in the military industry as weather conditions can affect a fighter plane’s flight and landing and can affect strategy carried out by warships on the sea. The importance of this information also leads into the second reason that the compromising of this information by malicious actors can result in a large threat to an economy and people, so finding a method that keeps the information secure is seen as an absolute must by the authors.  The demographic of the study could be people, businesses or organizations would be interested in encryption methods that would keep important data and information secure against third party bad actors, but considering the emphasis they placed on the effect it would have on whole nations I believe the demographic would most likely be government who would use this encryption method the thwart terrorism caused by the corruption of mishandling of the data.

           The main argument of this study is that ensuring the integrity of the acquired information is of utmost importance as this information dictates the prosperity of the nation’s economy, military and people. This can first be seen in the Abstract and in the Background where it repeatedly states that weather information is an important factor in the nation’s economy and security, and as such it is important that the information is transmitted securely and stored in a safe place. Then the importance of the information’s security is explicitly stated in the Conclusion here it states, “Considering the security of weather information, insecure weather information could be a huge threat to national security and the economy. It is essential, not optional.”  With this it is clear that these authors believe that securing and authenticating the observation data is essential to them.

         How We Can Better Predict Weather Catastrophes is an opinion piece published in the New York Times and written by Abhishek Chatterjee, William Collins, David Crisp and Arun Majumdar. The first is an earth scientist with the USRA and the NASA GSFC, the second is a professor of earth and planet science at the University of California, the third is an atmospheric physicist at the JPL of the California Institute of Technology, and the fourth is a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford and was a top official in the Energy Department during the Obama administration. The article argues that with the increasing frequency of extreme climate events in the United States, it is imperative that we become more capable of foreseeing these events. This through line can first be seen at the beginning of the article where they give some examples from around the world of extreme climate events. Then they acknowledge the improvements made in this endeavor, but state that the gaps between observations could have data that point to future disasters. This point then leads into the purpose of the article, which is to advocate for an international partnership to develop and utilize an Earth observation system. The importance of this partnership to the authors is shown when they said, “Recent efforts are attempting to fill the predictive gap with a combination of physics-based and artificial-intelligence-based models. But near-real-time measurements are needed to increase forecasting accuracy. Today’s capabilities are woefully inadequate to provide that data … The idea would be to sharpen our ability to monitor the environment, make the data available to the scientific community and expand our predictive capability well beyond what it is today to forecast extreme weather events generated by the warming climate.” This part of the text affirms for me that the focus of these authors is the creation of an international partnership that supplements the improving observation technology and techniques.

         By comparing the two studies and the article, I can see that the first study and the article are the most similar. Both communicate the idea of the adverse effect the weather can have on us and that current observational methods and technology are lacking in some aspects and need to be improved. But while the methods of improving observation methods and tech is the first study’s priority, the article’s main point is that there needs to be a collaborative global effort in collecting data to fill any gaps in our analysis of the current data. The second study is unique from the other two in that while it also acknowledges the importance of knowing about the weather, its priorities lie in how to improve the transmission and the authenticity of the collected data. Simply put, the first study focuses on the improvement of collecting data, the second study focuses on improvement of securing and authenticating data, and the article focuses on filling gaps in observations through a worldwide collaboration.

           Overall, I believe that these are all valid ways of improvement. I also believe that although their focuses are different they could actually be very compatible when put into practice. In my imagined scenario, a worldwide partnership is established, with researchers in Italy continuing to improve observation methods while the scientists in South Korea work to improve the wellbeing and authenticity of the data and the technology improves. I can only hope something like that can happen in the future.