What is it about?
Routine weather forecasts serve many purposes, and one of the most important is helping people avoid the potentially deadly consequences of extreme weather. We show, using comprehensive data from the last two decades, that accurate forecasts do indeed help save lives--especially on hot days. Using a survey of expert meteorologists, we also find that they expect forecasts to continue getting better in the future. In a warmer climate, more people will be exposed to potentially deadly extreme heat, meaning that realizing these projected improvements in forecasts has an even bigger effect on health. The experts emphasize that future forecast improvements will rely on continued investments in weather data and forecasting models.
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Why is it important?
Extreme temperatures are already the most deadly type of natural disaster in the United States. Accurate, credible weather forecasts have long been viewed as an important tool for helping prevent deaths from extreme weather. Our results -- that accurate weather forecasts do indeed save lives, especially on hot days -- provides context for discusses about continued investment in weather forecasting. And as the climate warms, deaths from heat are expected to increase, making accurate forecasts even more important.
Perspectives
I've long viewed weather forecasts as a miraculous technology that can be easy to take for granted. Our current weather forecasting system relies on a huge web of infrastructure to gather data, computing resources to process that data and produce initial models, and thousands of meteorologists who produce the final forecasts that the public enjoys. One of my goals with this study was to see just how big an effect on health these forecasts have, and I also wanted to get the perspective of the experts who work in this area every day to see how they view the promises and risks for the forecast system in the future.
Jeffrey Shrader
Columbia University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Weather forecasts become more important for reducing mortality as the climate warms, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2523372123.
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