A decrease in commercial airline flights because of Covid-19 has fundamentally affected meteorologist’s capacity to precisely predict the weather. All around the globe, studies have revealed that forecast accuracy plummeted since March. This sharp decrease in forecast precision coincides with when planes were grounded because of the pandemic. A few investigations analyzed weather predictions since March and compared them with the actual observed meteorological conditions. The disparity is clear. Forecasts are based partly on computer models. The accuracy of computer models depends on the data put into them. These incorporate aircraft, cruise ships, satellites, weather buoys, weather balloons, ground stations and radar. All sources rely upon each other, and none are dispensable. The Covid-19 pandemic greatly reduced the availability of information acquired from two of these sources: aircraft and cruise ships. Information from aircraft, for instance, includes some 13% of the information that goes into a regular computer model. Availability of these critical aircraft observations has reduced significantly since March, as a result of successive lockdowns and airport closures. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) observed how these measures have eliminated some half to 75% of airplane observations internationally. As per the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), if all flight information were to be eliminated, the precision of figure models would dip by some 15%. This would make little difference on most days, when the weather is not extreme. On days when severe weather is anticipated, however, a 15% decline in forecast accuracy could have dire consequences.

Let’s take the local scene as an example. To our south is war-torn Libya. With no established meteorological authority functioning there, data being fed to models specific for our area from the south is practically non-existent. Imagine what bigger impact a sharp decline in aircraft has had. Models specific for our region now rely on data inputted by the National Met Office at the Malta International Airport, ships traversing the central Mediterranean and meteorological authorities across southern Italy (specifically Sicily) and Tunisia. The fact that the Maltese Islands lie very close to a major shipping lane has helped mitigate the negative impact the loss of data has had on forecast accuracy.