(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Trump's DoD will turn off three critical weather satellites July 31st [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-07-08

On Monday, June 23rd, the Department of Defense announced that it would "stop ingesting, processing, and transmitting data essential to most hurricane forecasts," from three satellites. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellites to be turned off are F-16, F-17 and F-18. They know the data is essential, but the DoD is doing it anyway.

The next day, NOAA put up a service change notice to all users, including those monitoring the Atlantic skies at the Hurricane Center.

Though not immediately clear why the real-time data was suddenly discontinued, the decision appears to have stemmed from Department of Defense security concerns. Since hurricanes form and strengthen over the open water where direct observations are scarce or nonexistent, forecasters rely largely on data remotely gathered from the satellites. The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and its constellation of three satellites provide nearly half of all microwave satellite scans to forecasters.

These microwave satellites give definition at night that infrared satellites can not. This allows forecasters to see the system developing before first light when other satellites can see what's going on. These are the satellites that are being turned off.

Microwave data such as those from the DoD Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder are essential to Hurricane forecasts, not a nice-to-have.

This article by Michael Lowry on Substack has a detailed analysis of how all the hurricane predictions are made through various types of satellites. Lowry got a response from NOAA that made it sound like everything was fine, that they had data from other satellites that was adequate. He doesn't think so and explains why. He never did get a real response from the Department of Defense about why the satellites were being turned off.

The data from the three satellites were going to be shut off on June 30th. It was extended to July 31st after a request by Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA.

These DMSP satellites are getting to the end of their service life. A Weather System Follow-On Microwave (WSF-M) was launched in 2024, but Lowry said the data from this satellite is not being shared by the DoD and that there are no plans to do so.

Now with the catastrophic flooding in Texas, people are looking at the effects of Trump having fired meteorologists, among other devastating moves. A Congresswoman, I didn't catch the name, made a statement about the Trump Administration that applies here. "They continue to lie, and people will die."

That applies to Trump because when he was asked about the floods he said that the National Weather Service didn't see the disaster coming.

"This is an absolute lie. Worse, this is the person responsible for making those kids less safe and he's trying to deny the damage he caused," said meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus.

The Big Ugly Bill zeros out climate change research in 2026.

The Washington Post noted, "Trump's efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government's scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in the years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here."

One NOAA veteran said Trump's changes and firings could drag the agency back to the "technical and proficiency levels we had in the 1950s."

The executive director of the Sunrise Movement, Aru Shiney-Ajay said over the weekend, "Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis. These deaths are on Trump's hands." She was making an obvious reference to the deaths caused by flooding in Texas.

Why is the DoD cutting off the satellite data? The excuse given was a cybersecurity risk in the super computers used, so they are decommissioning the system instead of fixing the real or imagined risk. All the other possible reasons are total BS. NOAA has their own supercomputers. Given the raw data, they could do the number crunching on it instead of the DoD.

Cybersecurity risk? That's what computer security experts are for. Saying that they can't fix a problem, so they just shut down everything instead, makes them look like they're hiding the real reason. It would be like shutting down every government computer system because it is possible that someday, somehow, there could be a breach, so we just don't use computers anymore for anything.

With the flash floods in Texas, the National Weather Service said they gave flood warnings and Texas officials say they weren't specific enough. It's going to be finger pointing from here on out. The real failure seems to be the last mile in getting information to the people who were in the floodplain. That's on Texas, not the National Weather Service. The New York Post has a story that Texas scrapped plans for an early warning system for "Flash Flood Alley" because it was too expensive. The one projected for a neighboring county was $2 million with $500,000 covered by a grant. Kerr County has only 50,000 residents, so that was too much for Texas to pay. How much were the lives lost worth?

This unnecessary satellite shutdown is probably just another shot at anything that proves climate change exists. As usual, unseen consequences. Because the Trump administration doesn't care if there are any. NOAA is putting forth they're still getting the data they need. Mike Lowry says not. These days, we have to examine and trust the assessments of outside experts. Agencies' public relations are entirely suspect.

There are other satellites the DoD controls. What about the cybersecurity problem on processing that data? Same problem? With Pete Hegseth running the DoD, no one can trust anything they say.

Science is being shut down. It being replaced with Trump's new invention called the Gold Standard of Science. They call climate change research and those battling climate change a religion. This is not a joke. I've written twice about it. It's not good.

Real science is being replaced with pseudoscience. That's why Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill to outlaw weather control is being taken seriously.

Trump has become the Catholic Inquisition that would have put Galileo to death if they could have, but instead just made him recant the fact that the Earth rotates around the Sun and put him under house arrest. This is what we're looking forward to. Real science is ignored because pseudoscience serves their purpose. Don't get used to it.

The shutdown of these satellites comes right in the heart of the hurricane season. This isn't like Trump using his Sharpie on a weather prediction map. This is serious and has deadly consequences. It's not even saving the proverbial buck. The satellites are still working and there are no plans to replace what they do. It's criminally stupid.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/8/2332245/-Trump-s-DoD-will-turn-off-three-weather-satellites-July-31st?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/