Comment Two top officials at Hungary’s National Meteorological Service (NMS) were fired on Monday after severe storms predicted for the capital on the country’s most important national holiday failed to materialize but moved south. The forecast called for heavy thunderstorms in Budapest around 9 p.m. local time, according to an Associated Press report, prompting organizers to postpone a massive annual fireworks display. Fireworks to celebrate St. Stephen’s Day, a holiday marking the founding of the country, are typically watched by more than a million people. After the incorrect prediction, the Hungarian media criticized the agency. The NMS apologized on its Facebook page the next day, but it was too late to save the jobs of the agency’s head, Kornelia Radics, and her deputy, Gyula Horvath. On Tuesday morning, 17 agency heads reposted a statement on the weather service’s Facebook page to demand that their fired colleagues be reinstated as soon as possible, saying the layoffs were politically motivated and that the forecast was based on the best information available in Time. “It is our firm view that, despite significant pressure from decision-makers, our colleagues … gave it to the best of their knowledge and are not responsible for any alleged or actual damage,” the statement said. Bob Ryan, former president of the American Meteorological Society, told the Washington Post that the firing sends a “chilling message” to professional scientists. “I think it’s outrageous and now it’s making every forecaster working in Hungary fear they could lose their job because of a wrong forecast,” Ryan said. Matt Lanza, who runs Houston’s Space City Weather, said the inherent complexity of weather makes a completely accurate forecast nearly impossible. “Like anyone, a meteorologist should be held accountable for their job performance,” Lanza said. “But if they failed to perform their duties in a negligent or insubordinate manner, it would be unjustified to fire a forecaster based on this single prediction.” This is hardly the first time that scientists have faced pressure from their government. During the “Sharpiegate” controversy, when President Donald Trump presented a distorted forecast for 2019’s Hurricane Dorian, several officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) feared they could be fired for adhering to their science policy. integrity. Trump had mistakenly tweeted that Alabama could be in the path of the storm system, a decision he and members of his cabinet supported despite NOAA forecasts showing little to no impact on the state from the storm. New emails show how President Trump disrupted NOAA during Hurricane Dorian North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is getting angrier with time folks In another incident, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was once seen getting angry with members of his country’s weather service, scolding them a month after a severe drought hit the country in 2014. “It is necessary to radically improve the work of the Hydrometeorological Service to scientifically clarify meteorological and climatic conditions and provide accurate data for weather forecasting and meteorological and climatic information required by various sectors of the national economy in a timely manner,” Kim said. In another case, six Italian seismologists were jailed and convicted of manslaughter in 2012 years after a lengthy legal battle after they failed to predict a magnitude 6.3 earthquake in 2009 that killed 308 people. Their sentences were later overturned and the seismologists were cleared of wrongdoing. Earthquake technology could limit deaths. Afghanistan shows that it is not easy. The test surprised many in the scientific community, as earthquakes are difficult, if not impossible, to predict — though some say progress has been made. Scientists have been able to develop programs that can provide limited warning of earthquakes, including California’s ShakeAlert system.
