Several reasons why Trump’s budget hurts weather prediction
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By Kipp Robertson
May 31, 2017 at 5:26 am
UW professor Cliff Mass says Trump's budget would be detrimental to our country's weather forecasting. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)
President Trump’s 2018 budget plan was received with plenty of skepticism, and it has left University of Washington Professor of Climatology Cliff Mass “both disappointed and disturbed.”
Mass says it would be difficult to create a plan that would “undermine our nation’s weather prediction capabilities” more.
The budget contradicts the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by the president, Mass points out.
Read the 2018 NOAA Budget Summary here
Mass says the U.S. “is behind in numerical weather prediction.”
Proposed cuts in the millions, including $5 million of investment in mid-range weather outlooks, could disrupt NOAA’s efforts to expand and improve forecast systems.
“This decrease will terminate efforts to support the transition of new research to operational use as well as efforts to develop and implement improved couple global weather prediction models,” the NOAA budget summary reads.
What might be more concerning is the cut of $11 million to “reduce or eliminate components” of NOAA’s Tsunami Research and Operational Warning program, which will affect monitoring, reporting, modeling, research and support to partners.” NOAA would retain forecast and warning capacity through a single operational warning center.
Mass points out that the budget would impact the DART buoy system, which can sense increases in water levels.
“Stunningly, the Trump plan would eliminate these buoys, putting American and other lives at risk,” Mass writes. “Madness.”
Mass writes that the proposal would cut other programs that would hinder NOAA’s ability to help diagnose and predict El Nino and La Nina, as well as “all research” in the area of sea ice modeling and predictions.
“These are only a few of the outrageous, irrational cuts listed in the Trump NOAA budget plan,” Mass writes. “The result of these and other cutbacks would be to set back U.S. weather prediction several years, giving up any chance of advancing our nation’s weather prediction capabilities to state-of-the-science.”
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