Sudden loss of key US satellite data could send hurricane forecasting back ‘decades’ | US weather

The Ministry of Defense will interrupt a critical atmospheric data collection program at the end of June and gave meteorological forecasts for days to prepare, according to a public opinion sent this week. The scientists with whom the Guardian spoke say that the change could allow hurricanes to predict “decades”, just when the season of this year increases.

In an ocean and atmospheric national message (NOAA) sent to its scientists on Wednesday, the agency said that “due to recent service changes”, the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) “will interrupt the ingestion, processing and distribution of all DMSP data no later than June 30, 2025”.

Due to their unique characteristics and their ability to map the whole world twice a day with an extremely high resolution, the three DMSP satellites are a main source of information so that scientists monitor the Arctic Sea Ice and the Development of Hurricane. The DMSP is associated with the NOAA to carry out the weather data collected on satellites accessible to the public.

The NOAA said that changes would not have an impact on the quality of forecasts.

However, the Guardian spoke with several scientists inside and outside the American government whose work depends on the DMSP, and all have said that there are no other American programs that can form an adequate replacement of its data.

“We are a little blind now,” said Allison Wing, a hurricane researcher at Florida State University. Wing said that DMSP satellites are the only ones that allow scientists to see clouds inside the development of hurricanes, which gives them a critical advantage in the forecast that can now be compromised.

“Before these types of satellites were present, there were often situations where you wake up in the morning and would have a big surprise at what the hurricane looked like,” Wing said. “Given the increase in the intensity of hurricanes and the increase in prevalence towards rapid intensification in recent years, this is not the right time to have less information.”

Satellites have also formed a single source of data for monitoring the Arctic and Antarctic changes, and have followed continuous polar ice changes for more than 40 years.

“These are some of the regions that change the planet as quickly as possible,” said Carlos Moffat, an oceanographer from the University of Delaware who worked on a Antarctic Research Project that depended on DMSP data. “This new announcement on sea ice data is really like to blind us and prevent us from observing these critical systems.”

The researchers say that the satellites themselves operate normally and do not seem to have undergone errors which would physically prevent the data from continuing to be collected and distributed, so that the abrupt data could be an intentional decision.

“It’s quite shocking,” said Moffat. “It is difficult to imagine what the logic would be to delete access now and in a way so sudden that it is simply impossible to plan. I certainly know no other previous cases where we delete data that is collected, and we simply delete it from public access.”

The loss of DMSP occurs while the NOAA weather surveillance and climate surveillance services have become a critical effort this year, while the so -called Donald Trump initiative “The Ministry of Government” (DOGE) has instilled draconian cuts with federal environmental programs.

A current NOAA scientist who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals said that the action to stop the DMSP, when it is taken in context with other recent movements of the Trump administration, was equivalent to “a systematic destruction of science”.

The researcher also confirmed that the forecasters of federal hurricanes had not been prepared for the sudden change with only a few days of notice.

“It is an instantaneous loss of about half of our capacities,” said the scientist. “You cannot expect us to make specific forecasts and warnings when you take the useful tools. Frankly, it is an embarrassment for the government to take a course with less data and claim that everything will be fine.”

Scientists have said that the decision to stop the DMSP would lead to hurricane forecasts immediately degraded during what should be a season higher than the average as well as a gap in the surveillance of sea ice – just like the Arctic sea ice hits new low records.

“This is a huge success to our forecasting capacities this season and beyond, in particular our ability to predict a rapid intensification or to estimate the strength of storms in the absence of hurricane hunters,” said Michael Lowry, a meteorologist who worked at the National Hurricane Center in the Noaa and with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “The permanent judgment of the data of these satellites is insane, reckless and endangers the lives of tens of millions of Americans living in Hurricane Alley.”

The DMSP dates back to 1963, when the Ministry of Defense determined the need for high resolution cloud forecasts to help them plan spying missions. The program, which had been the longest meteorological satellite initiative of the federal government, has since become a critical source of information not only on the inner functioning of hurricanes, but also on polar ice, forest fires, solar eruptions and dawn.

In recent years, the DMSP had struggled to maintain constant funding and priority within the Ministry of Defense when it moved away from its cold war mission. The only other nation with a similar satellite capacity is Japan, and messages published earlier in June indicate that scientists had already considered a passage to Japanese data in the event of a DMSP failure – although this transition takes time.

Neither the NOAA nor the Ministry of Defense specified exactly which service changes may have encouraged such a program to be so suddenly interrupted.

In a statement to the Guardian, the noaa communications director Kim Doster, said: “The DMSP is a unique set of data in a robust suite of forecasts and modeling of hurricanes in the national portfolio of meteorological services.

“Noaa data sources are entirely capable of providing a full suite of state -of -the -art data and models that guarantee that the standard gold weather forecast that the American people deserve.”

A source from the NOAA to which Guardian spoke said that the loss of high resolution data of DMSP could not be replaced by any other existing NOAA tool.

The Guardian has also contacted the Ministry of Defense for a more in -depth explanation and will update this story with any response.