Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - For the cost of a cup of coffee per person, NOAA gives $100 million worth of information to the country’s governments and businesses, and helps individuals plan their daily lives so they are prepared for the weather and stay safe.
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was established under the Nixon administration to protect American lives and property from natural hazards. It includes the National Weather Service, the National Ocean Service, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service; National Marine Fisheries Service; and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations.
The agency falls under the Department of Commerce because of its indelible impact throughout all aspects of the American economy.
It provides data that allows innovative companies to spin off new opportunities and technologies. It alerts people in California and other wildfire-prone areas when dangerous conditions arise.
Through its scientific assessment of and linking data for hurricanes, coastal waters, aircraft, ships, and more, it’s responsible for the safety for coastal communities as well as other areas susceptible to climate-induced storms.
It helps airlines and ground delivery companies use the data to anticipate issues and prepare alternatives.
In Los Angeles, it predicts floods and droughts and monitors the coast for dangers from tidal waves to tornadoes. It is increasingly important for its warnings of fire weather and post-fire mudslides.
The same applies across California with the relevant additions of inclement winter weather and subsequent spring runoffs which, when ice dams collapse can have devastating consequences for the towns and farms in the watershed.
NOAA’s scientists are crucially involved in coastal resilience and in the preservation of biodiversity that helps maintain ecosystems essential for the state’s economy.
Ultimately, the lives and property of all Americans rest in its capable – at least until now – hands.
The agency’s science and stewardship are respected worldwide. Yet the MAGA administration persists in recommending the elimination of its scientific research division.
Furthermore, the privatization of NOAA and its National Weather Service as recommended by the Trump-affiliated Project 2025, is an over-reaching attempt to monetize these operations which will restrict access to weather data and limit critical time-sensitive and life-saving responses.
Free and publicly-available weather data ensures that all people and businesses and, most importantly, emergency responders have immediate access to pending changes to weather conditions and potential threats to life and property.
NOAA’s acquisition and operation of satellite technology provides data not only for the American public but also weather studies worldwide in return for heads-up on dangers headed our way.
Tracking long term ocean and climate changes around the globe helps develop long term models of future systematic changes and elements that contribute to the intensity of meteorological events and provides the basis for weather advisory watches and warnings.
The Teed-Off-One in the White House may think weather a secondary science, useful in that it can predict good golf weather or let him plan other diversions when the prognostication is foul.
But both rural and urban communities across the country are dependent on accurate information for public safety preparedness. Creating a prepared, resilient nation depends on connecting forecasts to the life-saving decisions that allow communities to withstand them.
NOAA’s scientists are on the frontlines of improving prediction of significant events along with their potential impact. Cuts to technicians and technology will compromise the agency’s ability to assess the insides of storms in order to more accurately predict the weather further out.
Not having that expertise, not being able to alert neighborhoods when power outages are possible so cities and senior facilities, hospitals and emergency management departments can make adequate preparations against loss of continuous electricity is a horror.
Putting American lives at risk.
Weather alerts aren’t generated by television soothsayers but provided to them based on hard data provided by NOAA technicians and interpreted by scientists who know the difference between tornado spinouts and straight-line winds, and can raise the red alert.
Certainly more accurately than when, with Sharpie in hand in 2019, El Egoist illegally altered a weather map depicting the progression of Hurricane Dorian sowing fear and confusion.
For-profit and sponsored private weather apps get their info from NOAA; they just repackage it under their own brand name. For the president to promote the idea that the agency is no longer needed because people can get the forecasts they need online is to say America no longer need farmers because food comes from grocery stores.
The precursor to the Weather Bureau and National Weather Service was established by Congressional resolution, signed into law on February 9, 1870 by President Ulysses S. Grant.
The National Weather Service operates 122 local offices that issue predictions specific to their home areas because as everybody knows, storms are idiosyncratic and subject to highly localized aberrations.
The Weather Service used to have two weather balloon launches per day from 150 locations across the country to obtain the raw data for these microclimate areas. No more.
Removal of NOAA’s funding and critical staffing will have one crystal clear outcome, escalating costs to homeowners, businesses, and the insurance industry.
Compounding factors are already leading to certain risks – homes in fire country – being uninsurable with consequent impacts on local economies and losses of livelihoods.
This in turn affects taxbases at city, state, and federal levels.
We need NOAA on the frontlines vigorously carrying out its mission, preventing greater loss of life and infrastructure from natural disasters, and mitigating the impact when communication is cut off and roads become impassable.
By developing models and monitoring data to help communities anticipate and prepare for meteorological threats. And providing resources for their self-sufficiency in times of crisis.
Losses are already mounting, and many will die and see homes and livelihoods endangered if we don’t start reversing the destruction wrought by DOGE which will ricochet for years. Future recoveries may be counted in years, not hours and days, leaving swathes of the country vulnerable to further disruptions.
Not only here but in many other nations that rely on warnings issued by NOAA. Countries unable to pick up the slack because US-centric technology can’t always be used or interpreted. And there is always the risk that inimical foreign powers might weaponize it.
Indiscriminate slicing and dicing of the agency by the ignorant has hindered the ability to obtain the technical data and to get it to those who can download and decode it, those who can accurately analyze it on a timely basis.
NOAA is shedding specialists skilled in assessment and making the hard decisions and, due to DOGE which continues unabated despite the defection of its chainsaw-toting figurehead, uncertainty and fears are driving more people to quit.
The future costs of this brain drain of irreplaceable scientists and technicians, especially those with the cutting-edge skills to integrate the inter-relatedness of multiple streams of data and technology, is inestimable.
Even as its acting administrator dangles the lackluster lure of potentially posting 126 permanent positions, who would want to go back?
Flipping NOAA’s services from a public good to a private pay-to-access only model threatens equity and access for all Americans.
The purpose of the federal government is to help people not profit off them.
The disastrous tornados of 2011 leaving hundreds dead and devastation across swathes of the southeast gave birth to the concept of “Building a Weather-Ready Nation” to use Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) to fill the gap between forecasts and community decision-makers to ensure informed and life-saving actions are followed expeditiously by integrating physical science and societal factors.
With 2025 having started with an especially active tornado season over a widening area, a summer and fall full of hurricanes and heat waves ahead of us…
With FEMA having been filleted of half of the experts who led teams to get aid to those who have been affected by emergencies and a quarter of its full-time staff…
With NOAA slashed to the core of staff that design and build the next generation of computer forecast models to provide Americans with quicker, more accurate hurricane forecasts. Especially given the acting head of FEMA told those under his jurisdiction that he wasn’t aware the country had a hurricane season…
With local offices of the National Weather Service so desperately short-staffed even in hurricanes-prone areas, they can no longer monitor overnight changes, and financially hamstrung from accessing data to determine temperature, humidity and wind direction to feed their forecast models…
America and Americans need NOAA. And we all need to fight for its full reinstatement.
For now, NOAA’s website – while it remains funded – provides a host of interesting information on top of a slew of data.
At the IDSS website you can access location-specific weather.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
