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Brazilian Air Force turns off five weather radars

Xinhua, April 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Brazilian Air Force turned off five meteorological radars due to budget cuts, the official news agency Agencia Brasil said on Friday.

According to Agencia Brasil, the radars, administrated by the Air Force's Brazilian Airspace Control System (Sisceab), were turned off two weeks ago.

They are located in the states of the southeastern region and in the Federal District, where the capital Brasilia is located.

The radars had never been turned off for something other than maintenance for the past 35 years. There are 23 radars in Brazil.

Sisceab reported that the radars are not the only tools used to access weather information and are not used for air traffic control.

"Besides the weather radars still in operation, Sisceab has other information sources for climate predictions, such as satellite images and land meteorological stations," Sisceab said.

The Brazilian Airlines Association (Abear) confirmed that the radars are not essential for commercial flights, which have other sources of meteorological information, but observed that the deactivation of the five Sisceab radars may have a bigger impact for smaller aircraft, whose technological resources are not as advanced. Endi