(AP) – National Weather Service no longer offers language translations for its products. This is a change experts say could put them at risk of missing potential life-saving warnings about extreme weather.
According to NWS spokesman Michael Musher, weather services have “suspended” translations as contracts with providers have expired. He declined to comment further.
Artificial intelligence company Lilt began offering translations in late 2023, replacing manual translations that weather services said were labor-intensive and unsustainable. It was eventually served in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French and Samoans. The contract lapses will occur as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to cut federal agencies’ spending, including cuts within the national maritime administration, where employee vacancy rates are high in NWS offices.
Community members will pilot the boat past a flooded vehicle in Frankfort, Kentucky on Monday, April 7, 2025 (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)
NOAA referred to the contract question in the message on the website that announced the contract. Lilt did not respond to requests for comment.
Nearly 68 million people in the US speak languages other than English at home, according to 2019 census data.
Failure to read emergency weather warnings could be a matter of life or death, said Joseph Trujillo Falcon, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign University, collaborated with NOAA, which studies methods for translating weather and climate information into the public, including the use of artificial intelligence.
He said weather warnings translated during the 2021 fatal tornado outbreak in Kentucky saved lives. A Spanish-speaking family interviewed later said that they received a tornado warning in English on their phones, but they ignored it because they didn’t understand it. When the same alert came in Spanish, they immediately looked for shelter, he said.
“It saved their lives,” Trujillo Falcon said.
Trujillo-Falcón said the weather warnings were translated by predictors who spoke multiple languages that could be “completely overwhelming” in addition to their forecasting obligations.
Locals are looking at the debris from a tornado home in Greenfield, Iowa on Thursday, May 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Charlie Neighborgor)
Andrew Krutzkiwitz, a senior researcher at Columbia School of Climate at Columbia University, says the translation is more important than extreme weather events. General weather forecasts are essential for many sectors, including tourism, transportation and energy. Families and businesses can make more informed decisions when they can get weather information, often including actions that should be taken based on forecasts.
Norma Mendoza Denton, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said there are many people in the United States who have limited English related to everyday life. For example, shopkeepers may be able to have a short conversation with customers, but they may not understand the same thing when it comes to reading weather and climate terms.
“If they don’t have access to the country’s weather service information in a different language, that could be the difference between someone’s life and death,” Mendoza Denton said.
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