Sudden loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back ‘decades'
The Department of Defense will halt a critical atmospheric data collection program at the end of June and has given weather forecasters just days to prepare, according to a public notice sent this week. Scientists that the Guardian spoke with say the change could set hurricane forecasting back 'decades', just as this year's season ramps up.
In a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) message sent on Wednesday to its scientists, the agency said that 'due to recent service changes' the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) will 'discontinue ingest, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30, 2025'.
Due to their unique characteristics and ability to map the entire world twice a day with extremely high resolution, the three DMSP satellites are a primary source of information for scientists to monitor Arctic sea ice and hurricane development. The DMSP partners with Noaa to make weather data collected from the satellites publicly available.
Noaa said the changes would not impact the quality of forecasting.
However, the Guardian spoke with several scientists inside and outside of the US government whose work depends on the DMSP, and all said there are no other US programs that can form an adequate replacement for its data.
'We're a bit blind now,' said Allison Wing, a hurricane researcher at Florida State University. Wing said the DMSP satellites are the only ones that let scientists see inside the clouds of developing hurricanes, giving them a critical edge in forecasting that now may be jeopardized.
'Before these types of satellites were present, there would often be situations where you'd wake up in the morning and have a big surprise about what the hurricane looked like,' said Wing. 'Given increases in hurricane intensity and increasing prevalence towards rapid intensification in recent years, it's not a good time to have less information.'
The satellites also formed a unique source of data for tracking changes to the Arctic and Antarctic, and had been tracking changes to polar sea ice continuously for more than 40 years.
'These are some of the regions that are changing the fastest around the planet,' said Carlos Moffat, an oceanographer at the University of Delaware who had been working on a research project in Antarctica that depended on DMSP data. 'This new announcement about the sea ice data really amounts to blinding ourselves and preventing us from observing these critical systems.'
Researchers say the satellites themselves are operating normally and do not appear to have suffered any errors that would physically prevent the data from continuing to be collected and distributed, so the abrupt data halt might have been an intentional decision.
'It's pretty shocking,' Moffat said. 'It's hard to imagine what would be the logic of removing access now and in such a sudden manner that it's just impossible to plan for. I certainly don't know of any other previous cases where we're taking away data that is being collected, and we're just removing it from public access.'
The loss of DMSP comes as Noaa's weather and climate monitoring services have become critically understaffed this year as Donald Trump's so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge) initiative has instilled draconian cuts to federal environmental programs.
A current Noaa scientist who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation said that the action to halt the DMSP, when taken in context with other recent moves by the Trump administration, amounted to 'a systematic destruction of science'.
The researcher also confirmed that federal hurricane forecasters were left unprepared for the sudden change with only a few days of notice.
'It's an instant loss of roughly half of our capabilities,' said the scientist. 'You can't expect us to make accurate forecasts and warnings when you take the useful tools away. It frankly is an embarrassment for the government to pursue a course with less data and just pretend everything will be OK.'
Scientists said the decision to halt the DMSP will result in immediately degraded hurricane forecasts during what is expected to be an above-average season as well as a gap in monitoring sea ice – just as Arctic sea ice is hitting new record lows.
'This is a huge hit to our forecasting capabilities this season and beyond, especially our ability to predict rapid intensification or estimate the strength of storms in the absence of hurricane hunters,' said Michael Lowry, a meteorologist who has worked at Noaa's National Hurricane Center and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 'The permanent discontinuation of data from these satellites is senseless, reckless and puts at risk the lives of tens of millions of Americans living in hurricane alley.'
The DMSP dates back to 1963, when the Department of Defense determined a need for high-resolution cloud forecasts to help them plan spy missions. The program, which had been the longest-running weather satellite initiative in the federal government, has since evolved into a critical source of information not just on the inner workings of hurricanes, but also on polar sea ice, wildfires, solar flares and the aurora.
In recent years, the DMSP had struggled to maintain consistent funding and priority within the Department of Defense as it transitioned away from its Cold war mission. The only other nation with similar satellite capability is Japan, and messages posted earlier in June indicate that scientists had already been considering a switch to the Japanese data in case of a DMSP outage – though that transition will take time.
Neither Noaa nor the Department of Defense specified exactly which service changes may have prompted such a critical program to be so abruptly halted.
In a statement to the Guardian, Noaa's communications director, Kim Doster, said: 'The DMSP is a single dataset in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools in the National Weather Service portfolio. This routine process of data rotation and replacement would go unnoticed in past administrations, but the media is insistent on criticizing the great work that Noaa and its dedicated scientists perform every day.
'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.'
One Noaa source the Guardian spoke to said the loss of DMSP's high-resolution data could not be replaced by any other existing Noaa tool.
The Guardian has also reached out to the Department of Defense for further explanation and will update this story with any response.
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