Posted on 06/28/2025 3:51:57 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The U.S. Department of Defense will no longer provide satellite weather data, leaving hurricane forecasters without crucial information about storms as peak hurricane season looms in the Atlantic.
For more than 40 years, the Defense Department has operated satellites that collect information about conditions in the atmosphere and ocean. A group within the Navy, called the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, processes the raw data from the satellites, and turns it over to scientists and weather forecasters who use it for a wide range of purposes including real-time hurricane forecasting and measuring sea ice in polar regions.
This week, the Department of Defense announced that it would no longer provide that data, according to a notice published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.
"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 Navy did not respond to questions about why it has stopped sharing the data with scientists and forecasters.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Space Force, which is responsible for the satellites, said in a statement that the satellites and instruments are still functional, and the Department of Defense will continue to use them even as it cuts off access for scientists.
"It's not an issue of funding cuts," says Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a federally funded research center in Colorado that has relied on the soon-to-be-terminated Defense Department data to track sea ice since 1979. "There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told."
The Navy did not respond to questions about what those concerns are.
Tracking hurricanes as they form The Department of Defense collects satellite weather information because it has ships and planes operating all over the world, and needs information about conditions in the oceans and atmosphere.
But the Defense Department data also allow hurricane forecasters to see hurricanes as they form, and monitor them in real-time.
"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."
For example, hurricane experts can see where the center of a newly formed storm is, which allows them to figure out as early as possible what direction it is likely to go, and whether the storm might hit land. That's important for people in harm's way, who need as much time as possible to decide whether to evacuate, and to prepare their homes for wind and water.
The data also allows forecasters to see when a new eyewall has formed in the center of the storm, which can indicate that the hurricane is about to intensify. For example, Tang says, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center used the data from Defense Department satellites to observe a circular eyewall forming in Hurricane Erick earlier this month as it moved over the Pacific.
"That was a really good indication that the storm was about to intensify much more quickly than the computer models indicated it was going to intensify," Tang says, which allows forecasters to publish early warnings. The storm hit Mexico as a destructive Category 3 hurricane.
NOAA, which oversees the National Hurricane Center, says the loss of the Defense Department data will not lead to less-accurate hurricane forecasts this year. In a statement, NOAA communications director Kim Doster said, "NOAA's data sources are fully capable of providing a complete suite of cutting-edge data and models that ensure the gold-standard weather forecasting the American people deserve."
Other satellites, operated by NASA and NOAA and by other countries, collect similar data, Tang says. But hurricanes form and intensify so rapidly that forecasters need near real-time information, which requires as many satellites as possible since no one sensor is always pointed at a given storm. Without the Defense Department data, there will be bigger gaps in time when forecasters will not know the current conditions inside a storm. That could lead forecasters to be surprised when a hurricane suddenly intensifies.
That's particularly concerning because, as the Earth heats up, large, rapidly intensifying hurricanes are getting more common. Storms that gather strength quickly right before they hit land are particularly deadly because people have little time to prepare and evacuate.
A scramble to keep monitoring sea ice The Defense Department satellites were also the main source of real-time information about changes to sea ice.
Sea ice data is important for a lot of reasons. Permanent sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic is shrinking rapidly because of climate change, and the exact amount of ice fluctuates dramatically over the course of each year.
In any given year or season, the amount of sea ice in the Arctic informs international shipping decisions, because when there is less sea ice around the North Pole, ships can take shorter routes across the globe.
On the other end of the planet, sea ice helps slow the melting of glaciers in Antarctica, which threaten the planet with catastrophic sea level rise if they collapse.
Now, as a result of the Defense Department's decision, six widely used datasets about sea ice at both poles will be interrupted, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
"We've been very reliant on these data for many years," explains Serreze, the director of the center. He says the Defense Department had warned him that the data would no longer be available after September. Then, this week, the deadline was moved up to June 30th.
"This June 30 deadline has really caught us by surprise," Serreze says. "And so we have to kind of blitz here to get things in order."
Serreze's team had already planned to switch to an alternate source of sea ice information: a sensor on a satellite operated by the Japanese government. The U.S. has access to data from that sensor through an agreement between NASA and the Japanese government's space agency.
But they thought they had months to make the switch, which requires a lot of labor-intensive calibration. Now they have just days before they lose access to the American data. "It's a blow," says Serreze.
And this is happening in the middle of a record-breaking year: so far in 2025 there is less sea ice in the Arctic than any other year since satellite records began in 1979.
Taxpayer-funded information provided to weather forecasters whose work ends up weather websites with annoying ads?
Here in north Idaho, if we want to see what the weather is, we just look out of the window.
Coincidentally there’s been a rash of unexplained weather-related phenomena lately — laser-like streaks across the sky, loud booming noises that aren’t thunder or sonic booms, etc. And they aren’t just anecdotal or blurry fotos on a cellphone. These phenomena have been observed (and recorded) via radar and satellite imagery. There’s some weird, obviously manmade stuff going on in the atmosphere lately, and too many amateur analysts are seeing it and — worse — sharing it. Could this be why the DoD wants to shut off access to its satellites?
I remember reading that 80% of weather forecasting is now private sector. Lots of economic sectors (agric, insurance, shipping, etc) rely on it.
Weather balloons.
Thanks for floating that idea. Uplifting attitude.
There is still NOAA and no shortage of private satellites. They will be just fine. They probably just sold the Navy data to China anyway.
This weather satellite fight between the USAF and NASA has been going on since the early 1960’s. NASA is given the lead on satellite development but never delivers so the USAF does it. It has only gotten worse since then.
What was a 1 meter cubed small and light satellite has become a 23 foot long 3 ton monster under NASA demands.
“”It’s not an issue of funding cuts,” says Mark Serreze,”
Mark Serreze said the Arctic would be ice-free by 2030. Oh No only 5 years left! minimum was in 2012.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jul/11/arctic-ice-free
“In the past 10 days, the Arctic ocean has been losing as much as 150,000 square kilometres of sea a day, said Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC.
“The extent [of the ice cover] is going down, but it is also thinning. So a weather pattern that formerly would melt some ice, now gets rid of much more. There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral.”
These idiots fail to know that prediction has been made long before they were born and it has never happened.
Your right NOAA is the place to go for world weather.
NOAA should just ask SpaceX to use their Starlink sat bus since it’s in mass production already. It has laser links to neighboring birds too so no ground stations needed except one at homebase. Those huge phased arrays make for fine passive microwave radiometers and you could even do active SAR radar with them to see not only rain,hail,but also using backscatter water vapor content all with Doppler motion tracking. It wouldn’t be hard to tack on visible, IR and UV wideview and narrow view imagers on the edges of the bus folded down for stack and pack launch.
Falcon could yeet 26 at a time into polar orbit from vandy. Then use the ion thrusters to shift the orbits into a continuous train of them one after another you would get coverage every 3.5 minutes in a 90 minute orbital slot.
Send up 10 falcon 9 flocks you would have 260 birds in polar orbits that could see in real time the entire planets atmosphere pole to pole. SpaceX could get this done in 6 months from the go word.
The DOD is getting Starshield made using Starlink sat buses those will host all kinds of radar and optical payloads. Including active and passive microwave radiometers and IR optics.
NOAA is fedgov they don’t have the limits that private satellite imagery nor data is subject too. NOAA should go right to SpaceX and order a flock of birds set up for multi spectral imagery and bistatic radars.
Ten Falcon 9 launches could put up complete global network with real time imagery and 3.5 min active radar coverage over any spot pole to pole. That level of radar coverage would not only allow rear time storm tracking world wide but also wind field data the Doppler can see not only rain but also atmospheric water vapor and particulates in motion. This would be a bonanza for storm forecasting and tracking plus prediction of wind turbine output if you can see the wind fetch over the whole globe your models become predictions down to the 15 min block level.
SpaceX already stamps out Starlink buses by the hundreds per year. They just did their 89th launch of falcon for the year and it’s only June...you only need ten of those for a global NOAA network.
“You want crappy useless data, go make it up yourself from climate change models”.
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