Density of weather data in the united states?

Question

if your goal was to vastly improve the density of weather data in the united states, would you focus on gathering more surface data or more upper-level data? Explain.

Answer 1

If I had to choose, I would want more upper-level data.  The upper-level observing network is much more sparse than surface observations.  In one way this makes sense, because the atmosphere is more turbulent and chaotic at the surface than at the upper-levels.  But ultimately, it is the upper-level patterns that drive the synoptic and sensible weather patterns in the U.S.  Ultimately the better you capture upper-level features accurately, you more accurately you can predict the driving weather patterns.  There are also a lot of microsscale features that impact winter storms and severe weather that happen in the mid and upper-level portion of the atmosphere for which the current network is too sparse to resolve.