Sudden loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back 'decades'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Sat 28 Jun 2025 10.27 EDT
First published on Sat 28 Jun 2025 07.00 EDT


A critical US atmospheric data collection program will be halted by Monday, giving weather forecasters just days to prepare, according to a public notice sent this week. Scientists that the Guardian spoke with say the change could set hurricane forecasting back “decades”, just as this year’s season ramps up.

In a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) message sent on Wednesday to its scientists, the agency said that “due to recent service changes” the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) will “discontinue ingest, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30, 2025”.

Due to their unique characteristics and ability to map the entire world twice a day with extremely high resolution, the three DMSP satellites are a primary source of information for scientists to monitor Arctic sea ice and hurricane development. The DMSP partners with Noaa to make weather data collected from the satellites publicly available. The reasons for the changes, and which agency was driving them, were not immediately clear. Noaa said they would not affect the quality of forecasting.

However, the Guardian spoke with several scientists inside and outside of the US government whose work depends on the DMSP, and all said there are no other US programs that can form an adequate replacement for its data. “We’re a bit blind now,” said Allison Wing, a hurricane researcher at Florida State University. Wing said the DMSP satellites are the only ones that let scientists see inside the clouds of developing hurricanes, giving them a critical edge in forecasting that now may be jeopardized.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/28/noaa-cuts-hurricane-forecasting-climate

[bluestarone]

1. BASTARDS!

WTF? DEATH PANEL BASTARDS!!

[Irish_Dem]

2. MAGA sadists love injuring/killing people and destroying property.

They get off on it.

[Lovie777]

3. shithole administration and the GQP want to physically destroy the USA and it's people..................

and start wars across the globe as well.

[NickB79]

4. Kiss insurance goodbye in coastal states like Florida

And when insurers pull out, the housing market will crash.

[Rebl2]

22. Thought

many insurance companies had already pulled out of FL. My insurance company, earlier in the year, decided to drop all homeowners insurance everywhere they sold it. I am in Missouri. So since they dropped us from homeowners insurance, we dropped them from covering our cars.

[Silent Type]

5. Apparently, this has been under consideration for years. Don't think we'll wake up one morning with an unforcasted

hurricane sitting on shore. Nor will we get anything less than a week or more notice.

https://spacenews.com/a-race-against-time-to-replace-aging-military-weather-satellites/#:~:text=Down%20to%20four%20operational%20DMSPs,DMSP%20DISAGGREGATED

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/wsf-m.htm#:~:text=WSF%2DM%20(Weather%20System%20Follow%2Don%20%2D%20Microwave)%20is,the%20microwave%20capabilities%20of%20the%20DMSP%20satellites.&text=This%20mission%20will%20improve%20weather%20forecasting%20over,measurements%20of%20the%20atmosphere%20and%20ocean%20surface.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. However NOAA has always worked with NASA and DOD

to utilize everything that is in orbit that is contributing scientific readings.

The "Hurricane Hunters" aren't just NOAA pilots but they rotate flights with the Airforce and their pilots to fly into the cyclones and release dropsondes. and since they cut a bunch, you have less flights into these storms.

Chaos at FEMA, NOAA as hurricane season starts

By Chelsea Harvey, Adam Aton, Thomas Frank | 06/02/2025 06:11 AM

(snip)

At the same time, NWS’ Hurricane Hunter program, which flies aircraft into the hearts of tropical cyclones to collect information on wind speeds and other conditions, is operating at reduced capacity. The measurements feed hurricane forecasts in real time and help long-term research on tropical cyclones. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that staffing shortages and aircraft problems have led to flight cancellations in recent years.

The Trump administration laid off several employees involved in the Hurricane Hunter missions. It’s also proposed eliminating funding for NOAA’s network of laboratories and cooperative research institutes, including the University of Miami’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, whose scientists collect key data on the Hurricane Hunter flights. If Congress approved the budget cuts, NOAA would lose access to many of the laboratories that help build and maintain its weather forecasts.

The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, housed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, analyzes satellite data on strengthening hurricanes. It’s the only institute in the country that monitors hurricane wind fields in real time as they form and intensify, according to institute Director Tristan L’Ecuyer, making it an essential component of NOAA’s hurricane forecasting system.

Meanwhile, staffing cuts have hit some of the NOAA offices responsible for designing and maintaining national weather models, like the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. “We’ve lost some of the staff that takes care of the quality control, that takes care of making sure that the models are really performing up to par,” Friday said. With less data to feed the weather models and less quality control, weather forecasts won’t improve over time — and they may even degrade, some experts said.

(snip)

They recently upgraded the supercomputers used to run the various global (e.g, GFS) and convective (e.g., NAM) models, usually 4 times per day. They get fed all kinds of data. The so-called "spaghetti models" are mostly aviation (I think including military) data-generated. And although NOAA has just barely been able to get some "newer" geostationary satellites in orbit - what are now known as GOES-EAST and GOES-WEST (plus I think a polar one recently), anything up there that can "fill in blind spots" helps with forecasting (even if it's older stuff) - and notably to look for what is becoming more and more common - frequent instances of "rapid intensification" (RI) of hurricanes due to climate change.

[reACTIONary]

19. Thanks! Not exactly a "sudden loss".....

..... "The four operational DMSP satellites currently orbiting the planet 14 times a day launched between 1999 and 2009. Built by longtime contractor Lockheed Martin, the 5D-3 block of DMSP satellites were designed to last five years. As such, the oldest of the four, DMSP 5D-3 /F15, has been living on borrowed time for roughly 17 years."

https://spacenews.com/a-race-against-time-to-replace-aging-military-weather-satellites

This article is from 2021, so we can add 4 years to that 17 year extended mission.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

6. How much would you bet that...

1100 S Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, FL 33480 will still be getting that data?

[tanyev]

7. It might set us back to where beautiful virgins are left at the gates of Mar a Lago

to appease the angry storm god. Hell, maybe that’s the plan.

[Shipwack]

8. I wonder if there is a private corporation in the waiting in the wings...

That will conveniently be able to replace this. For a small fee, of course...

[SonOfNebanaube]

23. Weather Wise from Ryan Hall

Application that generates a composite of Radar Coverage from TV stations Nation Wide. Follow him on YouTube. Get the App.

[PSPS]

10. "NOAA said they would not affect the quality of forecasting"

What would one expect trump loyalist Laura Grimm to say (i.e., lie?)

She is overseeing the rapid dismantling of one of the world’s leading climate and oceanic research agencies.

Since April, Grimm has served as the acting administrator of NOAA. In that time, NOAA has lost or forced out a large chunk of its workforce, canceled or paused hundreds of grants and contracts, and left key weather offices without full staffing as hurricane season begins.

[Bayard]

11. Was she hired just for her name?

[JoseBalow]

12. This is all about privatization

Everything else is bullshit.

[LiberalArkie]

13. That is the purpose. Remember during Reagan that the government could never do anything correctly,

only private companies could. That is the guiding principle of why they wanted to sell NWS to Accuweather. Public organizations could never do anything correctly.

This will prove to those people that the NWS is a useless organization and needs to be sold.

I imagine that the data that would have gone to the National Hurricane Service will now be funneled to Accuweather or maybe the Weather Channel. It will be used by someone that wants to pay for it.

[Evolve Dammit]

14. They want people to die. I really think that is the case. Cancer research cut. Meals on Wheels cut. Medicaid cut??

[AllaN01Bear]

15. snork

sooooo anti science

[BurnDoubt]

16. Not to worry... you can use Putin's Weather Report...

Just swipe your MAGA Gold Card for the info you need to cash in on the chaos and destruction. Do we really need to say it?

IT IS WRONG!!!!!

[flashman13]

17. Look at the bright side. Any hurricane that develops in the GULF OF MEXICO will hit a red state

Of course those red states will have less warning so the damage will be worse than if they had sufficient time to prepare. Then as soon as the wind stops blowing they will all beg for federal aid. Too bad so sad because FEMA has been gutted too. FAFO!

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

.

[Deminpenn]

20. This is true

nt

[twodogsbarking]

18. The payback in savings will be nothing compared to the loss from funding cuts.

Dumb and Dumber and Dumberer.

[republianmushroom]

21. This is going to make hurricane season a little more exciting.