From Watts Up With That?

By Julius Sanks

Back in 2005, AccuWeather, possibly along with other commercial weather companies, convinced former senator Rick Santorum to introduce a bill, S.786, 109th Congress, to prevent NOAA and the NWS from sharing data that was available from commercial vendors. The only support came from the weather companies. Most thought it would mean paying for weather data the taxpayers already funded — if they could even buy it from the vendors. The bill did not get a single co-sponsor; nor did a companion bill appear in the House. It died in committee.

Is AccuWeather using Project 2025 to try again?

The Heritage Foundation recently published Project 2025. It is a massive document that addresses, among other things, the administrative state. It steps through the entire federal government, with specific recommendations regarding each organization. One of the organizations it discusses is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for weather forecasting. NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) acquires and operates environmental satellites, among other things. Full disclosure: I spent about a third of my engineering and management career working as a contractor for NOAA. I worked weather forecasting and weather satellite development projects. This analysis focuses only on the National Weather Service and the satellite portion of NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS).

Project 2025 proposes sweeping changes to NOAA. To a large degree, it recommends replacing NOAA’s operations with private-sector commercial efforts. It claims this will result in lower cost and higher quality. But will it? Project 2025 provides virtually no evidence of that. Nor does Project 2025 give a complete view of how the NWS works.

A key flaw in Project 2025 is its emphasis on existing commercial forecasting. It says the NWS provides data to private companies and complains the NWS does not use “commercial partnerships as some other agencies do.” This is supposed to improve weather technology and cost-effectiveness by investing in “different sizes of commercial partners.” The document provides no evidence this is true. Nor does it show how this would improve forecasting accuracy.

Project 2025 greatly oversimplifies what the NWS does, how the NWS operates, and who its customers are. For example, it fails to mention the largest beneficiary of NWS forecasting: the public. A key part of local forecasting Project 2025 misses is watches and warnings. Local offices and national centers issue them. For obvious liability reasons, the commercial companies simply parrot NWS watches and warnings. Would a company such as AccuWeather accept that liability? It seems unlikely. Local offices also interact directly with local government officials, such as county disaster managers, when the situation warrants. Will a commercial company do that?

The NWS is mostly a local organization. Its “front line” is the 122 weather forecasting offices (WFO) and 13 river forecast centers (RFC). Operating 24/7/365, the WFOs are scattered throughout the 50 states, Guam, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico. RFCs, chartered with flood forecasting, normally operate 16 hours a day, 7 days per week, but will extend to 24-hour operation when necessary. Do any commercial companies forecast floods? Would they accept the liability? The WFOs and RFCs have specific areas of responsibility around the country. Their meteorologists and hydrologists are familiar with the local conditions and use that knowledge to supplement information from space and terrestrial sensors, and models, as they build their daily forecasts. About 90% of all weather data comes from satellites; NWS’s supercomputer models depend on satellite data.

In all, the NWS has over 4,000 employees, over 2,000 of which are meteorologists. AccuWeather has 4 – 500, with about 100 meteorologists. It is difficult to believe they can match the NWS’s local knowledge.

At the national level, NWS’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) has nine national centers (NC). Each is responsible for a particular type of forecasting. The centers often trade information to improve forecasting.

•            NCEP Central Operations — The NWS information technology center

•            Aviation Weather Center (AWC) — Aviation forecasts.

•            Climate Prediction Center (CPC) — Issues probabilistic climate forecasts from a week to three months in the future; up to a year for some conditions.

•            Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) — Develop and operate the NWS supercomputer numerical prediction models used for daily forecasts.

•            National Hurricane Center (NHC) — Hurricane forecasts.

•            Ocean Prediction Center OPC) — Provides marine weather and warning forecasts for the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.

•            Storm Prediction Center (SPC) — Works with tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, lightning, wildfires, and winter weather.

•            Space Weather Prediction Center(SWPC) — Observes solar activity.

•            Weather Prediction Center (WPC) — Generates nationwide forecasts, such as winter storms and precipitation

After very severe weather events, the NWS puts teams on the ground to assess damage. That is how they determine tornado strength. Sometimes, following a severe event such as a disastrous hurricane or major tornado outbreak, NWS performs service assessments to assess how well they performed. These are available to the public. Are the commercial companies willing to do that?

Another problem with Project 2025’s argument is how the NWS interacts with other government organizations, particularly the military. The NWS shares data with Air Force Global Weather Central, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command, and other organizations. It is hard to see how a commercial entity in this interaction would contribute value.

Finally, the NWS interacts with other countries’ forecasting activities.

Weirdly, Project 2025 combines the National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), complaining that data should be presented neutrally, while ignoring all other national centers. The NHC focuses on forecasting individual hurricanes. Its web site provides statistical information regarding what the USA can expect during hurricane season. Each year, it publishes provides a hurricane season outlook and a mid-season update. While this addresses climatic conditions, the discussion is strictly in terms of how climatic conditions affect hurricane development. It does not address the political climate debate. The CPC, with NHC collaboration, issues NOAA’s seasonal hurricane outlooks. These outlooks use climatic conditions, such as ocean temperature, to establish probable hurricane numbers and strengths. It is important to note as in all NOAA’s climatic forecasts, the hurricane outlook is strictly probabilistic. I.e. the 2024 Atlantic forecast predicted an 85% chance of above normal activity, with 17-25 named storms. NHC’s final 2024 monthly summary lists 18 named storms so far and says the year’s activity was “above normal.”

NESDIS is not part of the NWS. It is a separate NOAA branch. It is puzzling why Project 2025 thinks of them as a single organization. NESDIS acquires and operates weather satellites and serves as NOAA’s data depository. On the satellite side, it figures out how to turn weather satellite data into information useful to the public. It also works with EMC to use satellite data to properly initialize EMC’s forecasting models. Like the NWS forecasters, NESDIS satellite offices work hard to provide the most accurate information they can achieve for public consumption. NESDIS’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) provide the depository for all NOAA scientific data. Project 2025 is probably referring to NCEI. NCEI has been criticized for adjusting some archival data.

Project 2025 cites a 2020 AccuWeather report to claim studies “have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.” This is misleading. The study does not even mention the NWS. It compares AccuWeather to five other commercial companies. The claim commercial companies are better than the NWS is therefore, completely unfounded.

I have seen several claims online that in 2019, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) published a study stating for every dollar spent on the NWS, the country receives $73 in value. This claim is actually in the Congressional Record. I have searched exhaustively and doubt it exists. Failing to find it online, I contacted AMS to request a copy. AMS drew a blank but kindly sent me a different, comprehensive, study, published last year. It does not reach the same “value added” result, but concludes the public is quite satisfied with NWS forecasts. It uses a modified contingent valuation method to statistically estimate the public’s “willingness to pay” for NWS forecasts. The basis was a 2022 survey. The basic finding is people who use NWS forecasts are willing to pay about 900 tax dollars per year, with lower bound of about $700/year and upper bound of $1300/year. Multiplying these by the number of people who use NWS forecasts — about 114 million — the result is a total annual value ranging $795 million to $1.48 billion. The NWS FY22 budget request was $1.33 billion. It looks like the public is getting the value it expects from the National Weather Service. How many other federal organizations can say that?

Project 2025’s argument to restructure the NWS is not convincing. If DOGE used Project 2025 as its guidance for analyzing NOAA, it needs to rethink its approach.