For the past century and a half, the transmission of weather data between nations has been the last communications to stop on the eve of war and the first to resume when hostilities cease. Weather data flowed between Cuba and the United States throughout the 1962 missile crisis, for example, and continued between the Soviet Union and all other nations throughout the cold war.
Storms know no national boundaries.
Because countries depend on each other's weather data, they adhere to a set of agreements promising free data exchange. Each country extracts from the worldwide pool the information needed to make the forecasts that protect life and property, ease the lives of citizens, and serve the needs of commerce. Unfortunately, this marvel of scientific cooperation is now threatened. The once heretical notion of restricting the international exchange of weather data is being seriously debated among nations, and in some countries' meteorological services, it is already being unilaterally adopted and placed into practice. The new restrictions are born of the perceived need of many countries' weather services to recover some of their enormous costs by selling specialized forecasts.