Weather Service Stops Receiving Satellite Data, Issues Notice About Forecast Quality

[Purveyor]

Source: Washington Post

Since at least Tuesday, some satellite data – an important input to weather prediction models – has stopped flowing into the National Weather Service due to an apparent network outage.

At 1 p.m. today, the National Weather Service’s National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) issued the following statement cautioning the outage could impact forecast quality:

NCEP HAS NOT RECEIVED A FULL FEED OF SATELLITE DATA FOR INPUT INTO THE NUMERICAL MODELS SINCE 22/0000Z…POTENTIALLY IMPACTING THE MODEL FORECASTS.NESDIS AND NCEP ARE INVESTIGATING THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE ISSUE. ONCE THE SITUATION IS RESOLVED ANOTHER MESSAGE WILL FOLLOW.

It is unclear if the data outage is only impacting the National Weather Service or whether it extends to other international modeling centers such as the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting, home of the top-performing European model, and Environment Canada.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/10/22/weather-service-stops-receiving-satellite-data-issues-warning-about-forecast-reliability/?hpid=z5

---

Also read: America's Weather-Tracking Satellites Are in Trouble

The sats we use to predict the paths of snowstorms and hurricanes are nearing the end of their lives, and a replacement won’t be fully operational until 2018. Which is a problem.

August 8, 2014 6:30 AM

When Superstorm Sandy nearly sank New York City two years ago, we knew it was going to happen. Same with snowmageddon in 2010: D.C. got more snow than a Saskatoon Christmas, and, again, we knew it was going to happen. Those were both devastating storms, but we were as prepared for them as we could have been, thanks to two very important satellites. Now, however, as superstorms become more frequent, those two very important satellites are running out of time.

To pull together your five-day forecast, meteorologists rely on two types of satellites. The first sits 22,000 miles up, capturing basic information on a fixed location. The second orbits the poles, 500 miles up, filling in crucial image gaps and, more important, providing essential information about cloud formation, surface temperatures, and atmospheric conditions—the data that help us know where a storm is heading and how big it will be when it gets there.

Those polar-orbiting satellites, a primary and its backup, are the ones in crisis. The primary satellite—a short-term pathfinder built to test emerging technologies—was never really intended for use. Its backup isn't much better: an aging satellite with failing sensors that passed its predicted life expectancy last year. We would send up a replacement now, but it's still being built. When it is ready, should it survive launch, it could take until as late as 2018 to transmit usable data. Which means that, depending on when our current satellites stop working, the U.S. could be without crucial data for years. That's worse than inconvenient. It could cost us trillions of dollars, and hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

It didn't have to be this way. It didn't used to be: For most of the 1970s and '80s a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ensured that we always had two fully operational birds flying, with a backup in the barn. It was, says James Gleason, senior NASA scientist, a golden age. That all changed in 1994, when President Clinton tried to cut costs by combining the NOAA and Department of Defense weather-satellite programs. The marriage was doomed from the start. Both organizations came with top-heavy bureaucracies and their own specific needs. Together they formed a dysfunctional agency defined by budget overruns, infighting, and passive– aggressive stalemates. In all the turmoil, work on any new satellites slowed to a crawl, and any surplus dried up. By the time President Obama separated the two organizations in 2010, NOAA had to scramble to pull together a new program. As a stopgap, it sent up the only option left, our current satellite—that demonstration model, with a life span of only three to five years.

Gleason predicts that the satellite's spacecraft will last long beyond that span. But those instruments. NASA engineers have what he calls serious uncertainties regarding them. Three were developed under the previous satellite program, which means they didn't undergo NASA's rigorous review process. (A U.S. Government Accountability report called the workmanship of these instruments "poor.&quot When private-sector and government scientists are asked about them, they literally knock on wood.

more...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/news/americas-weather-tracking-satellites-are-in-trouble-17071566

[freeplessinseattle]

1. I read something on DU earlier about a major solar flare

Wonder if that might have anything to do with it?

[Purveyor]

2. I saw that too. Perhaps. The Popular Mechanics article is quite interesting and troubling, indeed.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Can not get itself into space, can not spare money to replace aging satellites, a two trillion dollar

war, trillion dollar tax cuts for the wealth, a trillion more to bail out the banks and a trillion dollar albatross of an airplane....who would have thought the vast wastefulness of a militarized nation, the awesome waste of the American military, would have a consequence?

[RKP5637]

11. ... but the MIC is raking in zillions of $$$$$'s. What a sham the US has become. And the

militarization of local police. Where is this place going to be in another 10 years or so. Lots of money to kill any moving thing. Other costs, well, we can't do that, we gave the MIC half the budget plus. USA War, Inc.

[tularetom]

4. For many years we're going to be seeing the consequences of austerity measures

adopted during the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations. This is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. A lot of things we have come to take for granted are going to become permanently unavailable to us unless and /or until somebody takes the bull by the balls and redirects government spending and tax policy away from the destructive direction it's currently taking.

[2naSalit]

6. ^^^THIS^^^ n/t

[RKP5637]

12. I've been waiting for this, but some democratic politicians are too

gutless to stand up and stop it. And others benefit from it.

[SoapBox]

15. ^^^THIS^^^

[jen63]

5. Now this, imho

is worth having our hair on fire about. Really disconcerting.

[Android3.14]

7. If there are no other weather satellites to provide the modeling data

This could become serious fast.

[WhiteTara]

8. I wonder how old they are.

More of our crumbling infrastructure and if the pukes take control we are sooooo screwn.

[RobertEarl]

9. We can always get data from the Russians

They've been flying our astronauts for years now.

[starroute]

10. There are also problems involving the buoys

Those networks are also essential to weather forecasting, and they've also been allowed to decay. Here's something from last winter.

http://www.nature.com/news/support-our-buoys-1.14594

The numbers don’t add up. When, in 2012, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) retired the Ka’imimoana, a former US Navy ship dedicated to maintaining an array of moored buoys that monitors the equatorial Pacific Ocean, administrators were able to chop roughly US$6 million from the annual NOAA budget. In 2013, the agency says, it spent up to $3 million chartering boats for the same purpose. Those charters have failed to keep pace with the rigorous maintenance requirements, however, and the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array has partially collapsed as a result (see Nature http://doi.org/q72; 2014). The upshot is that, to save a few million dollars, NOAA has left the world partially blind to a phenomenon that can cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.

The TAO array exists as a direct result of that phenomenon: an intense warming of surface waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific, known as El Niño. In 1982–83, scientists did not see it coming, and could only watch as its effects rippled through the global weather system to wreak havoc around the world. NOAA researchers responded with a moored array that could be used to monitor both the upper layer of the ocean and the atmosphere above. The agency partnered with the international community to test and deploy the instruments in the 1980s, and by 1994 nearly 70 moorings were in place. That helped scientists to give advance warning several months before the epic El Niño of 1997–98, which nonetheless contributed to extreme weather that killed thousands of people and caused massive amounts of damage. . . .

Those are reasons enough to maintain a viable monitoring system in the equatorial Pacific, but the array’s value extends well beyond weather forecasting and into basic climate research. It also provides baseline data for researchers studying the effects of global warming on El Niño cycles. For instance, an analysis published this month suggests that the frequency of major El Niño events — such as those in 1982–83 and 1997–98 — are likely to double this century (W. Cai et al. Nature Clim. Change http://doi.org/q4c; 2014). And as discussed two weeks ago in these pages, the equatorial Pacific is also a focal point of research into the current global-warming hiatus (see Nature 505, 261–262; 2014).

Budget pressures are understandable, and difficult funding decisions are made every day at agencies such as NOAA. But there can be no doubt that the decision to cut the costs of array maintenance was a mistake. The question now is what to do about it.

[AllyCat]

13. All the more convenient for climate change deniers

[burrowowl]

14. Strange?!

[ReRe]

16. This will be the Perfect Storm...

... for the morally bankrupt disaster Capitalists. Add our broken infrastructure to the mix,
and it becomes the Perfect Storm squared.

[Martak Sarno]

17. Wx Job Openings

I guess we'll start seeing ads on the government pages, Craig's List and various others for openings in the weather prognostication area:

Wanted:
People who can predict the weather through the use of troubled knees. elbows and other reliable parts of the body.
Also wanted are people who will volunteer to watch farm animals for signs of change in the weather.
Also, we're looking for qualified rain makers.

NOAA can be notified by pigeon in the result of inclement weather.

Please apply at the nearest telegraph office.


Welcome to the 1800s, America.

Brought to you by

[nashville_brook]

18. k and r

[drm604]

19. One more result of refusing to maintain infrastructure.

[Omaha Steve]

20. How can they tell the difference?