The End of Weather Forecasting

Got a heads up on this from a senior scientist who emailed today:

“If this happens, weather forecasting as we know it will end.”

Further underlined by Daniel Swain, well known to readers here.

Axios:

The Trump administration has informed NOAA that two pivotal centers for weather forecastingwill soon have their leases canceled, sources told Axios. 

Why it matters: One of the buildings is the nerve center for generating national weather forecasts. 

• It was designed to integrate multiple forecasting centers in one building to improve operating efficiency. It houses telecommunications equipment to send weather data and forecasts across the U.S. and abroad.

Driving the news: The NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction is on the lease cancellation list, according to a NOAA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. 

• Two ex-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials also confirmed the list.
• The building houses the National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, or NCEP, which includes the Environmental Modeling Center. It opened in 2012and has about 268,000 square feet of space.
• The modeling center runs the computer models used in day-to-day weather forecasting, and ensures that weather data correctly goes into these models and that they are operating correctly. 

The lease cancellation was first reported by The Verge. The National Weather Service didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

• The NOAA employee told Axios the cancellations — along with recent layoffs, early retirements, and travel and hiring limitations — point to an effort to dismantle the agency.

Between the lines: Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been working through the General Services Administration to cancel government leases of office space.

• The NOAA employee told Axios a nightmare scenario could unfold if the College Park building was shuttered, but the agency still was tasked with the same missions as at present.
• In that case, NOAA would have to somehow replicate its functionality somewhere else in a process that could take a year or more and leave critical forecasting gaps.
• It would also require new congressional appropriations to get that done.

The intrigue: The cancellation notice for the College Park facility isn’t final, as a spreadsheet detailing all the properties on the cancellation list has an end date of “TBD” for that building, according to the NOAA staff member.