Hurricane expert sounds alarm that Trump's admin killed key weather satellites
Hurricane and storm surge expert Michael Lowry penned a column on Thursday, warning of a recent decision by President Donald Trump's administration to kill three weather satellites just as hurricane season is ramping up.
He wrote that on Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced it would "stop ingesting, processing, and transmitting data essential to most hurricane forecasts."
By Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed the news in a "a service change notice to all users," which included those monitoring the Atlantic's skies at the Hurricane Center.
"By next Monday, June 30th, they would no longer receive real-time microwave data collected aboard three weather satellites jointly run by NOAA and the U.S. Department of Defense," wrote Lowry.
The Atlantic's hurricane season begins June 1, but this week was the first time a named storm popped up in the ocean. Lowry noted on X that the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) was extremely low and it dissipated by Wednesday. Being able to chart that information in the future might be more difficult without access to the data gathered by the three satellites. Those three provide about half of all forecasters with scans needed to track and predict hurricanes.
The specific information gathered comes from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS), wrote Lowry. The loss of information runs the risk of forecasters missing an increase in hurricane severity when the sun comes up.
"Since hurricanes form and strengthen over the open water where direct observations are scarce or nonexistent, forecasters rely largely on data remotely gathered from satellites," explained Lowry. "While hurricane hunting airplanes help to close that gap, they’re only available for about 1 in every 3 hurricane forecasts in the Atlantic and virtually none – except for a handful of stronger storm exceptions – in the Pacific.
Traditional satellites lack the capability for forecasters to look beneath the clouds and access the key data necessary to make accurate predictions. Lowry described it as similar to an MRI scan for the storm. Sometimes an X-ray or physical exam is fine, while other injuries or diseases require more information.
Retired National Hurricane Center branch chief James Franklin, told Lowry, “Their loss is a big deal."
Until his retirement in 2017, Franklin oversaw all of the hurricane forecasters in the NHC/
“Without this imagery, there will be increased risk of a ‘sunrise surprise,’ the realization from first-light images that a system had become much better organized overnight, but it wasn’t recognized because structural details are so hard to discern from [infrared satellite]," he said.
At the start of hurricane season earlier this month, Miami meteorologist John Morales showed a clip of a 2019 storm where he assured those on the east coast of Florida that the hurricane would turn. Given the budget cuts at NOAA and the NHC, Morales warned his audience that he would not have enough information to be certain.
"I'm here to tell you I'm not sure I can do that this year. Because of the cuts — the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science, in general, and I could talk about that for a long, long time and how that's affecting the leadership and science over the years and how we're losing that leadership, and that is a multi-generation impact on science in this country," he said.
This year, more meteorologists will be forced to tell their audiences that, due to budget cuts, they have a lack of certainty. Information like that helps people decide whether or not they should flee the area.
Those at the National Hurricane Center are now preparing to suddenly handle the next few months without the critical forecast data they need for predictions. Now, Lowry wrote, the weather and climate community is "scrambling to understand the rationale behind the abrupt termination." No one seems clear on why the real-time data would be cut.
All of the states along the Gulf Coast and the Southeast Coast are states that supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. They will now be the states most impacted by the budget cuts, according to experts.