Hurricane Erick struck Oaxaca, Mexico, in June. Hurricane forecasters used data collected by satellites from the Ministry of Defense to monitor the storm because they intensified more quickly than IT models had not suggested. These DOD data will no longer be shared with the forecasters.
Luis Alberto Cruz / AP
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Luis Alberto Cruz / AP
The US Department of Defense will no longer provide satellite weather data, leaving the hurricanes forecasters without crucial information on storms while the Pic’s Hurricane season is looming in the Atlantic.
For more than 40 years, the Ministry of Defense has been operating satellites that have collected information on the conditions in the atmosphere and the ocean. A group within the Navy, called the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, processes the raw data of satellites and gives it to scientists and meteorological forecasts which use it for a wide range of ends, including the hurricane forecasts in real time and the measurement of sea ice in polar regions.
At the end of June, the Ministry of Defense announced that it would no longer provide this data, according to a published opinion by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Noaa. The date of termination was originally at the end of June, but after an uproar by scientists and forecasters, it was updated at the end of July, according to the Navy.
“I was surprised, given the importance of predicting hurricanes and monitoring important characteristics such as sea ice,” explains Brian Tang, researcher at hurricanes at the University of Albany. “These are data that forecasters regularly use.”
The navy did not answer questions about the reasons why he has stopped sharing data with scientists and forecasters.
A spokesperson for the American spatial force, who is responsible for satellites, said in a press release that satellites and instruments are still functional, and the Ministry of Defense will continue to use them even if it reduces access to scientists.
“This is not a problem of financing cups,” explains Mark Serz, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a research center funded by the Federal Government of Colorado which has relied on the data from the Ministry of Defense which will soon be finished to follow sea ice since 1979. “There are cybersecurity problems. This is what we are said.”
The navy did not answer questions about specific concerns. In a statement, a spokesperson for the navy only wrote that “the program no longer meets our requirements for the modernization of information technology”.
Follow the hurricanes as they form
The Ministry of Defense collects satellite weather information because it has ships and planes that work all over the world and need information on conditions in the oceans and the atmosphere.
But the data from the Ministry of Defense also allow the forecasters of hurricanes to see hurricanes in their form and monitor them in real time.
“What we can do with the data is that we can see the structure of hurricanes”, explains Tang, “in a way an MRI or an radiography.”
For example, hurricane experts can see where the center of a newly formed storm is located, which allows them to determine as soon as possible in which direction it is likely to go and if the storm could strike the earth. This is important for people in danger, who need the most time as possible to decide to evacuate and prepare their houses in the wind and water.
The data also allow forecastists to see when a new eye wall has been formed in the center of the storm, which may indicate that the hurricane is about to intensify. For example, says Tang, the forecasters of the National Hurricane Center used the data of the satellites of the Ministry of Defense to observe a circular eye wall forming in the hurricane Erick earlier this month while he was moving on the Pacific.
“It was a very good indication that the storm would intensify much faster than the IT models indicated that it was going to intensify,” said Tang, which allows forecasters to publish early warnings. The storm struck Mexico as a destructive category 3 oil.
The NOAA, which oversees the National Hurricane Center, said that the loss of data from the Ministry of Defense will not lead to less precise hurricane forecasts this year. In a press release, the Noaa communications director Kim Doster said: “Noaa data sources are fully able to provide a full suite of state -of -the -art data and models that guarantee that the standard gold weather forecast the American people.”
Other satellites, operated by NASA and NOAA and by other countries, collect similar data, says Tang. But the hurricanes are formed and intensify so quickly that forecastists need almost real time information, which requires as many satellites as possible because no sensor is always pointed on a given storm. Without the data from the Ministry of Defense, there will be greater gaps in time when forecasters will not know the current conditions in a storm. This could lead forecastists to be surprised when a hurricane suddenly intensified.
This is particularly worrying because, as the land heats up, large hurricanes with rapid intensification are more common. Storms that come together quickly just before hitting the earth are particularly fatal because people have little time to prepare and evacuate.
Sea ice in the Arctic in March 2025. NASA follows the changes in sea ice with both poles using satellite data. Scientists will rely on the data from a Japanese satellite sensor to monitor sea ice in the future, because the US Defense Ministry will no longer share similar data from American satellites.
NASA / NASA’s scientific visualization studio
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NASA / NASA’s scientific visualization studio
A race to continue monitoring sea ice
Satellites of the Ministry of Defense were also the main source of information in real time on the changes in sea ice.
Sea ice data is important for many reasons. Permanent sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctica shrinks quickly due to climate change, and the exact quantity of ice fluctuates considerably during each year.
During a given year or season, the quantity of sea ice in the Arctic informs international delivery decisions, because in the event of sea ice in the North Pole, ships can take shorter routes around the world.
At the other end of the planet, sea ice helps to slow down the fusion of glaciers into Antarctica, which threaten the planet of Catastrophic elevation of sea level if they collapse.
Now, due to the decision of the Ministry of Defense, six sets of data widely used on sea ice with both poles will be interrupted, according to the National Center for Snow and Ice Data.
“We have been very dependent on this data for many years,” said Tétez, director of the center. He said that the Ministry of Defense warned him that the data would no longer be available after September.
The Serze team had already planned to go to another source of information on sea ice: a sensor on a satellite operated by the Japanese government. The United States has access to data from this sensor through an agreement between NASA and the Japanese government’s space agency.
But they thought they had months to make the change, which requires a lot of calibration with a high intensity of workforce.
And this occurs in the middle of a record year: so far in 2025 Less sea ice in the Arctic that any other year since the start of satellite registers in 1979.
