Weather Forecasting: The Importance of NOAA and the National Weather Service
The Power of Preparation
The Houston region had a few days to prepare for Hurricane Beryl, and the July storm still caused dozens of deaths as well as flooding and widespread power outages. Six months later, the city largely shut down ahead of a winter storm that brought several inches of snow in a rare weather event for Southeast Texas. How might the region have braced for those storms, and how much more damaging could they have been, if it weren’t for the forecasts released by the National Weather Service?
NOAA: A Vital Agency
The administration of President Donald Trump is reportedly considering funding cuts and layoffs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency that includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center. Considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on weather and climate science, NOAA also manages commercial fisheries in the United States.
A Houston Meteorologist’s Perspective
Eric Berger, a Houston meteorologist and editor of Space City Weather, told Houston Matters on Tuesday that it would be “pretty awful” if the local National Weather Service office were to close. “The radar that we all look at when there’s severe storms is operated by NOAA, their office in League City,” Berger said. “So if you lose that radar, you lose an incredibly powerful tool in understanding weather. That would be really a catastrophic loss.”
The Impact of Cuts
Axios reported this week that the U.S. Department of Commerce sent NOAA officials a list of keywords to search grant programs, with an apparent focus on projects related to climate change. According to the Scientific American, which cited an unnamed member of Congress and two former NOAA officials, the Trump administration is considering cutting the agency’s workforce in half.
The Cost of Cuts
Berger said cutting resources to a federal agency he described as efficient and cost-effective could ultimately put Americans’ lives at risk, because they rely on information from news outlets and dedicated weather experts that get the bulk of their data from NOAA and the National Weather Service. The agency operates a network of satellites, ocean buoys, weather balloons, and other monitoring equipment, according to Berger, who said NOAA “collects all that data and processes it and shares it freely and publicly.”
The National Weather Service: A Life-Saving Mission
As for the National Weather Service, Berger said its underlying mission is to warn people about severe weather conditions so they can protect themselves and their property. “They issue all of the warnings that are the basis for hurricane evacuations or opening cooling centers when it’s really hot or warming centers when it’s really cold,” Berger said. “The whole emergency management system relies on their warnings locally.”
Privatizing Weather Forecasting: A Bad Idea
Berger criticized the idea of privatizing weather forecasting, noting that existing commercial weather services use publicly available data from NOAA and the National Weather Service as foundations.
The Importance of Climate Data
Berger also said NOAA, created in 1970, keeps track of data that help to create weather models over periods of days and months as well as climate models over periods of years and decades. Those trends are interconnected, Berger said, and help to make people more informed and ultimately safer. “When NOAA does this annual sort of state of the planet or average temperature or gives us this historical data, it is very important to understand when we’re setting record high temperatures or having abnormal weather, to compare it to past events,” Berger said. “That is all data collected and maintained by NOAA. That gives us high confidence that we’re comparing apples and apples when we’re looking at weather.
“Frankly,” he added, “if we’re going to understand short-term forecasting, we really need to understand the background of whether or not the planet is warming to put it all into one context.”
Conclusion
The importance of weather forecasting and climate data cannot be overstated. NOAA and the National Weather Service play a vital role in keeping Americans safe and informed about severe weather conditions. Cuts to these agencies could have devastating consequences, putting lives at risk and compromising the ability to respond to natural disasters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is NOAA and what does it do?
A: NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that includes the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center. It is responsible for understanding and predicting weather and climate patterns, as well as managing commercial fisheries in the United States.
Q: What is the National Weather Service?
A: The National Weather Service is a division of NOAA that is responsible for issuing weather forecasts, warnings, and advisories. It is also responsible for maintaining a network of weather radar and satellite systems.
Q: Why is it important to preserve NOAA and the National Weather Service?
A: Preserving NOAA and the National Weather Service is crucial for keeping Americans safe and informed about severe weather conditions. These agencies provide critical data and warnings that help people prepare for and respond to natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and heatwaves.
Q: What is the impact of cutting funding to NOAA and the National Weather Service?
A: Cutting funding to NOAA and the National Weather Service could have devastating consequences, including reduced ability to issue accurate weather forecasts and warnings, and compromised ability to respond to natural disasters.
