Planes are a major source of weather data Next143/Getty Images
Grounding the world’s commercial airliners in an attempt to stop the coronavirus crossing international borders could have an unexpected effect: weather forecasts may get less accurate.
That is because commercial planes often carry meteorological instruments, and the readings they gather feed into weather-forecasting models. With , this valuable data set has been temporarily lost.
Stan Benjamin at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a similar situation occurred in 2010. That spring, the ash-laden eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano triggered Europe’s
