When staffing shortages caused the National Weather Service (NWS) to suspend weather balloon launches at its Kotzebue, Alaska, station earlier this year, a startup deploying next-generation weather balloons, WindBorne Systems, stepped up to fill the void. The company began selling its western Alaskan atmospheric data to the NWS in February, plugging what could have been a critical data gap in weather forecasting. Weather balloons collect real-time atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind speed, and pressure data that meteorologists use to predict the weather and understand longer-term changes to the climate. As the beleaguered weather service struggles to maintain its forecasting and other services, it’s leaning on private companies to pick up the slack. While they lauded the companies’ innovations, they said that NOAA must maintain ownership of its “backbone” data assets like weather balloons to ensure public safety and maintain the historical climate record.