The Department of Defense unexpectedly decided in June that it’s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which has been sharing vital weather data with scientists for 40 years, will stop disseminating the information to NOAA and other agencies. The announcement said that the satellites are still fully operational, and the move was made due to cyber-security concerns.
Operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Navy’s Fleet Oceanographic and Meteorological Center, the satellites and the data they produce provide data on hurricane formation and the movements of sea ice. The failure to share hurricane information will directly affect the scientists and their forecasts at the National Hurricane Center.
“I was surprised, given how important it is for forecasting hurricanes and monitoring important features like sea ice,” says Brian Tang, a hurricane researcher at the University at Albany. “This is data that forecasters use regularly.”
The satellites collect roughly half of all of the microwave scans of the world’s weather systems and can see through clouds into the centers of storms that are forming rapidly. Without this microwave data, the NHC will be essentially cut off from the basic information they need to predict a hurricane’s formation, intensification and ultimately its path.
The surprise announcement, which was issued by NOAA, said that the inter-agency data sharing would cease as of June 31, 2025. But, scientists around the country who rely on the microwave data raised such an alarm that the termination data was moved to July 31.
“What we can do with the data is we can see the structure of hurricanes,” Tang explains, “Sort of like an MRI or X-ray.”
This allows the scientists to accurately assess the early size and intensity of the storm and its development which then can be fed into the weather models to predict the storm’s most likely path and ultimately its danger to the shipping and boating communities and those living in coastal communities.
While the Navy and the DoD have made no comment on the panned cessation of DMSP data sharing, this move is part of as pattern of downsizing NOAA and degrading their scientists’ abilities to provide us with the most accurate weather forecasts.
In an aside, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a Mandate for Leadership, calls for the elimination of NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. While the administration has not undertaken this radical step, the topic is on the table in some circles and citizens should be aware of the danger to coastal communities and the boating public such a policy would entail.
