US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5446120

by drewr • 1 year ago

300 114 1 year ago

text.npr.org

leereeves• 1 year ago

"There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told."

Anyone know what that's about?

WarOnPrivacy2• 1 year ago

"There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told."

Let's try to make sense of that.

    1) the cybersecurity talent from DoD and USG is so decimated it can't
    field a response to whatever this concern is or

    2) the DoD has the talent to resolve whatever this concern is and they
    are deliberately leaving this concern in place or

    3) the DoD is lying about a cybersecurity issue being the reason
    that they're withholding lifesaving data (from benefiting
    the public that paid for it).

genter• 1 year ago

Fourth option: a cyber company that could potentially sell weather forecast data is loosing it's financial security because NOAA gives it away for free.

bigiain• 1 year ago

Blamestorming, fingerpointing, and avoiding saying anything that might make Trump tweet about them in allcaps at 2am.

sunflowerfly• 1 year ago

They want to privatize it for private gain and to shut down climate change alarms. It is in Project 2025.

kranke155• 1 year ago

it's sure great we have a blueprint that explains all of this in detail.

morkalork• 1 year ago

Okay and then what? There's already huge issues with getting home insurance in places like Florida, what will they do, force companies to offer it against their will and see them go broke? Convince people that insurance is woke? There are real problems that aren't going away, regardless of their beliefs.

pasquinelli• 1 year ago

"It's not an issue of funding cuts," says Mark Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a federally funded research center in Colorado that has relied on the soon-to-be-terminated Defense Department data **to track sea ice since 1979**. "There are cybersecurity concerns. That's what we're being told."

hmmmmmmmmmm

Mobius01• 1 year ago

Is this an attempt at controlling the narrative around climate change, in line with the impacts at NOAA and other climate-related government agencies?

mason_mpls2• 1 year ago

Don’t look up!

burnt-resistor2• 1 year ago

The timing is just, it's atrocious. Okay, at this very moment, I say we sit tight and assess.

gwerbin2• 1 year ago

Yes. Quoting Projct 225:

Break Up NOAA ... NOAA consists of six main offices ... Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized. NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.

https://envirodatagov.org/project-2025-national-oceanic-and-...

Tldr: shut down NOAA to suppress climate change evidence, research, and preparedness; outsource to private industry the remaining parts that are considered directly useful for commerce.

Is it any wonder that the CEO of Accuweather Barry Myers was a Trump donor who became a NOAA head administrator appointee in Trump's first term? The appointment fortunately failed. Now they're trying again.

chamomeal2• 1 year ago

Oh geez that… that is upsetting

matthewdgreen2• 1 year ago

If we survive this, these people will go down in history as monsters.

ars3• 1 year ago

No, this was cancelled by congress in 2015 and switched to the JPSS program which is running and active.

bamboozled2• 1 year ago

Could more than one thing be goin on?

WarOnPrivacy2• 1 year ago

Here is what will be denied to NOAA, now and going forward

    Defense Department data also allow hurricane forecasters to see
    hurricanes as they form, and monitor them in real-time.

    For example, hurricane experts can see where the center of a 
    newly formed storm is, which allows them to figure out as 
    early as possible what direction it is likely to go, and whether
    the storm might hit land. That's important for people in harm's way,
    who need as much time as possible to decide whether to evacuate,
    and to prepare their homes for wind and water.

The public paid for this data. Deliberately siloing the data to insure it can't save American lives wouldn't just be theft, it would be an act indistinguishable from evil.

aprilthird2021• 1 year ago

Wow, they'll literally kill American citizens and American citizens will still overwhelmingly vote for them...

jfengel• 1 year ago

The margin wasn't overwhelming. But if you include the number of people who could have done something about it but failed to, yeah, an overwhelming number allowed it to happen. And, as far as I can tell, will continue to.

mistrial92• 1 year ago

it would be ...

lots of ways to fill in that part. iterating the words seems worth the effort. Thinking out loud, there are readers with frame of reference, and movements or politics-in-practice that have frames of reference, in the messaging .. So making a 2x2 square and filling it in.. you can write for the readers and refine, you can align with movements or their spokespersons and refine, all combined with you yourself representing what you are about.

So to complete the exercise.. how many readers of YNews would respond to "that is evil" wording.. how many movements or politics-in-practice would say "that is evil" as part of their outfacing communications.. and how strongly to you, the writer, want to associate the concepts of "that is evil" with respect to other things that you say or think are important.

I write this pedantic screed because this is so, so critical to communicate right now. The narrow rocky valley pass in which to lay an ambush, is completely in place.. the budget strings. Everyone knows that this is raw executive power in action.. it is to be, because I say so, implemented via the purse. I am not sure how much to include those backdrop statements in any impactful messaging though, because "there is no bad news in sales" and popularity or adaption is part of the task.

mistrial92• 1 year ago

oh this is great "Weather: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver"

whycombagator• 1 year ago

NOAA, which oversees the National Hurricane Center, says the loss of the Defense Department data will not lead to less-accurate hurricane forecasts this year. In a statement, NOAA communications director Kim Doster said, "NOAA's data sources are fully capable of providing a complete suite of cutting-edge data and models that ensure the gold-standard weather forecasting the American people deserve."

lurkshark2• 1 year ago

I wouldn’t really expect a Trump administration spokesperson to put out a statement critical of the Trump administration’s decision.

tw04• 1 year ago

Kim Doster is a Trump appointee who worked on Musk’s super pac. Her previous position was as a climate change denial specialist. Pardon my skepticism that we can believe anything she has to say. The Trump administration is a big fan of hiring Iraqi information minister wannabes as their spokespeople.

whoopdedo• 1 year ago

The public paid for this data.

Someone should file weekly FOIA requests.

bix65• 1 year ago

Didn’t they axe everyone who handles FOIA?

renegade-otter• 1 year ago

Generally the outcome of voting for criminals, thieves, and conmen/women.

And then people wonder why they are erecting spikes around the White House and the Treasury. The pillaging has begun.

mason_mpls2• 1 year ago

so now we get to pay for our weather forecasts twice, once for the military and once for us

mlfreeman• 1 year ago

Are the satellites being turned off, or could people with SDRs pick this up directly from space and offer it up for free?

Buttons8402• 1 year ago

They're DoD satellites, so encryption is a real possibility.

ethan_smith• 1 year ago

Yes, many weather satellites broadcast in frequencies accessible to amateur SDR setups (137-138MHz for NOAA polar orbiting satellites), though military weather satellites like DMSP use different frequencies and encryption that make civilian reception significantly more challenging.

hypercube33• 1 year ago

saveitforparts actively vlogs about the weather satellite sdr stuff. It's an interesting thing to learn about

righthand4• 1 year ago

This is part of Project 2025 to destroy the NOAA. [0]

Break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"fully commercialize" the National Weather Service's forecasting operations.[1]

[0] https://www.project2025.observer/?search=NOAA

[1] https://www.project2025.observer/?search=Weather

ivape2• 1 year ago

What in the actual fuck. I can’t believe they are actually doing all those little petty things.

righthand4• 1 year ago

Yes as warned and ignored.

nemomarx• 1 year ago

Genuine - did you think it was exaggerated in the media or that they wouldn't? A lot of people seem to have not taken it seriously around 2023, even though it was a very detailed plan with legal strategies, implementations and bills, etc in there.

TheOtherHobbes• 1 year ago

They're not just petty, they're wildly impractical.

You can't privatise NOAA and the services it offers. It cannot work at an equivalent level as a private service. Its effectiveness relies on being able to decide what's valuable in purely scientific terms, and those terms don't align with short-term corporate greed.

But if you ask these cranks what NOAA actually does, they'll have no clue. They're not just evil, they're stupid - the smallest, most banal bureaucrats, cosplaying radicals.

mtmail• 1 year ago

One of arguments seems to be based on climate change denial

"Together, these [six main offices of NOAS] form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable"

"Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area."

sorcerer-mar3• 1 year ago

"Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area."

Absolutely mind-boggling that someone can put that in writing with a straight face.

const_cast• 1 year ago

climate change alarm industry

Ah yes, that very infamous industry of selling... alarm... for climate change. As opposed to Small Oil, which we all know is a very tiny industry that doesn't influence anything.

conradev• 1 year ago

A lot of very specific things in the original source: https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...

I found this one funny:

  Overlap exists between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Overly simplified, the NMFS handles saltwater species while the Fish and Wildlife Service focuses on fresh water. The goals of these two agencies should be streamlined.

Right next to

  Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.

Yikes.

Buttons8402• 1 year ago

I see 3 possibilities: They're cutting it off to limit bad news about climate change, for political reasons. Or they're trying to set up some private company to sell the same data.

Or (tinfoil hat on) they're going to do something the raw microwave data might expose and so they're trying to keep the microwave data secret.

CharlesW• 1 year ago

There's no mystery, this is the execution of Project 2025. https://envirodatagov.org/project-2025-annotation/

ars3• 1 year ago

There's a 4th possibility: This program was cancelled in 2015 and it finally ended.

The replacement is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System

recury• 1 year ago

The JPSS is complementary. The replacement for the DMSP satellites are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_System_Follow-on_Micro...

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

Earlier:

Hurricane Forecasters Lose Crucial Satellite Data, with Serious Implications

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44402665

beefnugs• 1 year ago

Its like dump said, they will start nuking the typhoons or whatever that shape is on the radar. Aint nobody got time for analysis

rooftopzen• 1 year ago

Also historically happens during wartimes: https://niemanreports.org/press-access-to-satellite-images-i...

skiboyec3• 1 year ago

My hunch is that the location of the satellites can be deduced from the weather data. These satellites would be a target in a time of war.

3-5105• 1 year ago

Satellites using sun-synchronous orbits can circle the Earth multiple times in a day.Compared with a stationary observer on the ground,they are moving at a relatively fast speed.Therefore,as long as they delay the release of observational data by a random time period,there won't be this issue.Only geostationary satellites would have this problem.

But a bigger problem comes before the above issue:most of the current human meteorological satellites do not have stealth capabilities.You can see them directly.Perhaps your idea will become a practical problem when satellite stealth technology matures.

This is a translation.

skiboyec3• 1 year ago

I did not see your comment before I left mine! But yes the second half makes sense.

I do think you might able to deduce the orbit even if the data release is delayed by a random time period. If you’re a foreign adversary that has its own satellites, you can measure the same information from a known orbit. Then one could compare the published data with one’s known dataset to deduce things like the angle from which the data was measured.

skiboyec3• 1 year ago

Hmm I think I’m wrong. From what I can tell satellites , especially those in LEO can be optically tracked pretty easily

sorcerer-mar3• 1 year ago

Yeah I was going to say: you can also know where satellites are by looking at them. Obviously we're not publishing weather data from the ones with important natsec equipment onboard.

dmix• 1 year ago

Most plausible reason. National security hawks have always been extremely protective of intelligence even when the risk is tiny. Probably some DoD people (or person) wanted to keep it closed and new hawkish leadership let them do it.

Who knows, the Navy hasn't released any statement beyond "cyber security risks" so there's only politics to fill in the blanks.

It seems to be this agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Numerical_Meteorology_an...

Who recently got a supercomputer system https://www.montereycountynow.com/news/local_news/a-new-supe...

bix65• 1 year ago

So why does The King get to tweet pictures from our spy satellites then?

justinrubek2• 1 year ago

It's not even close to being a plausible reason when project 2025 states that this needs to happen.

gpm• 1 year ago

The location of the satellites is public knowledge. Satellites are trivially tracked from the ground - the amateur community does this whenever someone tries to keep the location of one secret: https://www.popsci.com/zuma-spy-satellite-amateur-astronomer...

They also don't exactly move much, it takes precious fuel to change a satellites orbit.

jimnotgym4• 1 year ago

The rest of the world needs to club closer together, and quickly. The US is no longer a reliable ally.

GiorgioG5• 1 year ago

By all means please do and pay for it yourselves.

galacticaactual2• 1 year ago

Yep.

bix65• 1 year ago

Heaven forbid the richest nation on earth that steals resources from everyone else contribute to global improvement.

jzb2• 1 year ago

It’s no longer a reliable place to live, either.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS• 1 year ago

I've seen this argument a lot, but I don't see people clamoring to leave. I don't think anyone is taking makeshift boats to Cuba from the US, for example.

If you live in the US, are you actively looking to leave?

idiotsecant• 1 year ago

This is example number 7748492 of how the decline of America will be practically irreversible once a political machine with any kind of rational worldview is in charge again. It took a century to build some of the things that are being destroyed in days or weeks. We're looking at the fall of rome. The only question now is whether a dark age follows or whether someone else takes over.

accurrent• 1 year ago

As a non-American who's life has been previously saved by knowing that a typhoon would strike my home this has me wondering how we will be affected. A lot of smaller countries don't have the infrastructure/man power to maintain a space program. To what extent is the rest of the world reliant on this data and what does this mean for us? Will we still have predictions? How does international collaboration on meteorology generally work? Do Europeans/Chinese/Indians/Russians also share data about weather?

stego-tech• 1 year ago

“We shouldn’t keep trusting nation-states for meteorology data. They can and will cut off access if the powers that be demand it, even if it hurts billions of others by doing so.” - Me, circa mid-2010s

“You’re overreacting, nobody would be dumb enough to cut off access to data like that. Stop being alarmist.” - Everyone I have shared that thought with since.

Unfortunately, “I Told You So’s” don’t pay my rent, otherwise I’d have a decent home of my own by now. Here’s hoping ESA or JAXA help fill that gap until the UN can take over (an organization ideally suited for global meteorology tasks).

alexpotato• 1 year ago

Michael Lewis, in the Fifth Risk, has a whole chapter on how during Trump 1 the head of Accuweather was basically trying to shut down free distribution of weather updates from NOAA/National Weather Service.

The reason:

For profit weather companies don't want free government weather updates going out to their potential customers.

PS. Having been on HN for many years and watched the full "disrupt old industries!" cycle, I'm not that surprised this is where we have ended up.

sorcerer-mar3• 1 year ago

People probably reacted poorly to this because it's hard to disambiguate from "we shouldn't keep trusting nation-states for x [because I'm actively working to profit from providing an alternative]" from "[because I'm worried others will dismantle it despite my best efforts to prevent it]"

DonnyV• 1 year ago

No one agrees to this so why are we accepting this??

galacticaactual2• 1 year ago

Because if you want the data go get it yourself.

bix65• 1 year ago

O yes every person should launch their own cube sat. Come on.

aswanson• 1 year ago

Good God. The Fall of civilizations episode for the United States will be galactically stupid. The Sumerians: climate change and soil degradation. The Assyrians: external tribes organizing against their brutality. The US: fox news, AM radio, and conspiracy theory uncle Facebook memes.

bamboozled2• 1 year ago

Podcasts.

actionfromafar2• 1 year ago

Strikingly succinct.

ars3• 1 year ago

Such hyperbolic comments!

The DMSP program was discontinued in 2015 by a vote in congress[1]. Virtually every working stallelite in this program has failed. As best as I can tell there's just a single working one specifically NOAA-19[2].

Instead the program has switched to JPSS[3] which is part of GEOSS[4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Meteorological_Satelli... (scroll up slightly)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Polar_Satellite_System

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Earth_Observation_Syste...

maxglute• 1 year ago

What unique weather monitoring does DoD have over civilian capabilities or other govs who has weather satellites?

burnt-resistor2• 1 year ago

The billionaire's mantra: "Anything free is communism! Gubberment bad!"

This is a sign of a larger effort to replay the fall of the Soviet Union in America: sell off public lands, privatize everything that was public, and charge more money and take on debt for worse services where funds are gifted as dividends to owners rather than providing value to customers because a powerful ruling class demands more money and more power.

US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data

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