Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the impact of the Trump administration’s reduction in scientific budgets on hurricane research.
Hurricane Eric hits Mexico as Category 3
A small town in Oaxaca, Mexico, was hit as Category 3 by Hurricane Eric, the first hurricane of the season.
The Department of Defense is blocking weather forecasters from data collected by special satellites that can “see” through clouds, experts say hurricane researchers could steal important information as hurricane season kicks into gear.
“They’re making the most of the time,” said Gilles Trepannier, hurricane climate scientist and chairman of the Department of Geographical Anthropology at Louisiana State University.
The “persistent” cutoff will halt the distribution of all data collected by three military-operated satellites, according to a June 25 notification release by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The Pentagon first announced that the data cutoff will take effect on June 30th, but then pushed back the date to July 31st.
The satellite is equipped with unique tools for peering under cloud cover, and predictors capture microwave images that are not available elsewhere. Their infrared sensors capture images over an area of 1,600 nautical miles and illuminate the information twice daily.
According to NASA, satellites launched between 2003 and 2009 bring Earth into orbit every 101 minutes at an altitude of approximately 515 miles. It tracks weather patterns in remote areas, including “fog, severe thunderstorms, dust and sandstorms and tropical cyclones,” according to Space Force.
The Navy confirmed the data cutoffs, adding that the satellite program is already “scheduled in September 2026.”
The Space Force called the Navy for questions.
The Navy “considering changes at their end, its attitude to sharing data for the DMSP (Defense Weather Satellite Program) has not changed,” Space Force said in a statement. Satellites and equipment are “still functional,” and Pentagon users “receive ‘data’ from them and continue to operate.
“People could die.”
Hurricane experts have already raised alarms about the impact of the Trump administration’s reduction in scientific budgets on hurricane research. When tropical regions are plagued by storms, they say that satellite data cutoffs can exacerbate the problem. Hurricane season begins in June and ends on the last day of November.
“We went back to tracking hurricanes like we did in 1999. People can die except this is not a party,” John Morales, a three-year television meteorologist specializing in hurricanes, wrote on NBC OP-ED. Military satellites “providing important information that normal weather satellites cannot do,” he wrote.
The change “will seriously interfere with and even worsen hurricane predictions this season, affecting tens of millions of Americans living along hurricane-prone coastlines,” wrote hurricane expert and storm surge expert Michael Lowry in a Subsack article. The three military-run satellites provide predictors with about half of their microwave satellite scans, Laurie writes.
Trepanier said data from the satellites represents “probably the weakest puzzle piece” that today models hurricanes to track “quickly enhancements” and “see structures like storms are forming.”
The “biggest threat” was the sudden turn of the closure, and researchers “rewind” the researchers said, Trepannier.
It’s frustrating when there’s something that can make it easier for researchers to focus on “other aspects of the storm trajectory,” she added.
Forecasters warn that flossy, which became resistant to tropical storms on June 29, could become a hurricane within days. The storm was expected to flee the Baja California Peninsula the following day, about 155 miles southwest of Zihuatanejo on Mexico’s Pacific Coastline on June 30th.
