NOAA’s hurricane forecasts will continue to be able to use data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Michael Lowry reports that in a last-minute reversal, the U.S. Department of Defense will continue to allow NOAA to have access to that data for the remainder of the satellites’ lifespan (about a year or two). NOAA and NASA had been told that they’d lose access to the data today: see previous entry. In an earlier post Lowry challenged the notion that a viable substitute could be found for the DMSP’s Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS) data, the loss of which he described as “significant and devastating” to hurricane forecasting. [Wonkette]
Tag: NOAA
Sharpiegate Investigators Placed on Leave
CNN reports that two NOAA officials who led the internal “Sharpiegate” inquiry—which found that NOAA leadership violated its ethical standards and scientific integrity policy when they backed Trump’s Sharpie-adjusted hurricane forecast map—were placed on administrative leave on Thursday. In a complete coincidence, one of the officials they found in violation, then-acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs, has been nominated to become Trump’s new NOAA administrator, with a committee vote on his nomination coming next week.
Previously: Inside NOAA During Trump’s Sharpie Mapmaking Period.
Defense Department Cuts Off NOAA, NASA from Key Satellite Data Used in Hurricane Forecasting
Citing cybersecurity concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense is cutting off NOAA and NASA access to data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), throwing a wrench into the NOAA’s ability to forecast hurricanes, CNN reports. Of particular concern is the loss of access to the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS). CNN explains:
This tool is like a 3D X-ray of tropical storms and hurricanes, revealing where the strongest rain bands and winds are likely to be and how they are shifting.
Such imagery provides forecasters with information about a storm’s inner structure and is one of the limited ways they can discern how quickly and significantly a storm’s intensity is changing, particularly at night and during periods when hurricane hunter aircraft are not flying in the storm.
It does not appear that the agencies were given notice of this move. They managed to negotiate a one-month extension, to July 31. NOAA says it can use other sources for its hurricane forecasts.
NOAA Cuts Threaten Spatial Reference System Update
Wired reports that Trump administration cuts to NOAA are threatening an already-delayed update to the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), which was supposed to replace NAD 83 and NAVD 88 in 2022 with corrected spatial measurements more in line with satellite data. (See this 2020 post on the difference in elevation data.) “According to former staff, NGS was sitting at 174 employees at the start of the year, with staff looking to fill an additional 15 positions to help with rolling out the new datums and educating federal agencies and local governments on their use. Since January 20, the agency has lost nearly a quarter of its staff and has had to freeze planned hiring.” Wired situates this in the context of the U.S. falling further behind in geodesy research.
G5-Scale Geomagnetic Storm in Progress
The Earth is being hit by a solar storm at the moment; NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has observed severe (G5) geomagnetic storm conditions for the first time since 2003. Among other impacts, this may disrupt GPS and other navigation systems. On the other hand this also means aurorae where they’re rarely seen: see SWPC’s aurora dashboard for maps.
Previously: NOAA’s Aurora Forecasts.
El Niño and Snowfall in North America
NOAA’s ENSO blog maps the impact of El Niño on snowfall in North America.
Obviously, snowfall is limited in its southernmost reaches because it needs to be cold enough to snow, so the effects are strongest in the higher and colder elevations of the West. To the north, however, there is a reduction in snowfall (brown shading), especially around the Great Lakes, interior New England, the northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, extending through far western Canada, and over most of Alaska. In fact, El Niño appears to be the great snowfall suppressor over most of North America.
The above map shows the change in snowfall during all El Niño years; additional maps tease out other details (such as the difference in moderate-to-strong El Niños). [CNN]
NOAA’s Aurora Forecasts
It turns out that auroras are a thing you can generate weather maps for. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has this experimental Aurora Dashboard that predicts the visibility of the aurora borealis and australis for the next two nights.
(And space weather is in fact something that NOAA tracks: the term covers the effects of solar phenomena, cosmic rays, the ionosphere—think aurora sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and their impacts on climate, communications, the power grid, GPS.)
Updates to Maps of Historical Earthquakes, Tsunami and Volcanic Eruptions
Every two years or so, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information updates poster maps based on its Global Historical Tsunami, Significant Earthquake and Significant Volcanic Eruption databases; the 2022 editions are now available. The posters, made in collaboration with the International Tsunami Information Center, are distributed to emergency response personnel; they provide a historical overview of where earthquakes or eruptions took place, or tsunami originated, going back literally millenia. The maps can be downloaded in PDF format: Significant Earthquakes 2150 B.C. to A.D. 2022, Tsunami Sources 1610 B.C. to A.D. 2022, and Significant Volcanic Eruptions 4360 B.C. to A.D. 2022.
Mapping NOAA’s New Climate Normals
This month NOAA updated the official U.S climate normals. You know how in a weather forecast a meteorologist talks about normal temperatures or normal amounts of rain? The climate normals define what normal is: they take into account weather over the past 30 years, and are updated every 10 years. As you might expect, the normals do reveal the extent of climate change.
NOAA compares the new 1991-2020 normals period with the one that came before (1981-2010): “Most of the U.S. was warmer, and the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. was wetter, from 1991–2020 than the previous normals period, 1981–2010. The Southwest was considerably drier on an annual basis, while the central northern U.S. has cooled somewhat.” (Bear in mind that there’s a 20-year overlap between the two normals.)
The New York Times has created a series of animated maps showing how 30-year normals compare with 20th-century averages for temperature and precipitation. “The maps showing the new temperature normals every 10 years, compared with the 20th century average, get increasingly redder.”
The data is available from NOAA’s website.
Hurricane Laura
Hurricane Laura information and resources, including maps of the observed and forecasted storm track, potential rainfall, storm surge and flooding, and other warning maps, can be found via NOAA’s Laura event page, the National Hurricane Center’s Hurricane Laura page, and the Esri Disaster Response Program’s Hurricane Hub. [GIS Lounge]
The Impact of NOAA’s Height Modernization Program
Last month the New York Times covered a subject that you’d expect to be too technical for the general reader: NOAA’s efforts to recalibrate elevation data as part of its update to the National Spatial Reference System, expected in 2022 or 2023. The height modernization program corrects local elevation data—which was last updated in 1988—by using GPS and gravity mapping. The Times article looks at the real-world implications of this effort, which will have the greatest impact the further west and north you go (see map above), from bragging rights about mountain elevation to whether your community is in a floodplain. [MAPS-L]
Previously: NATRF2022 Datum Coming to North America in 2022.
Inside NOAA During Trump’s Sharpie Mapmaking Period
Remember the nuttery surrounding President Trump, his erroneous warning that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama, and his Sharpie-adjusted hurricane map? That was two whole months ago. It all put NOAA and the National Weather Service in an awkward spot. Mother Jones put in a Freedom of Information Act request for their internal emails and found out just how uncomfortable things were inside NOAA during that period.
Previously: Trump, Maps and Manipulation; ‘A Defilement of a Sacred Trust’.
‘A Defilement of a Sacred Trust’
I hadn’t planned on posting anything about Trump’s Sharpie-adjusted hurricane forecast map: there was nothing useful for me to add to the discussion, and presumably you’d all heard about it already and didn’t need me to tell you. But it turns out something map-related can, and has, been said about the issue.
Charles Blow was once in charge of the New York Times graphics department, and an art director at National Geographic. His response to Trump’s marked-up map was “visceral”:
Because of this unyielding commitment to accuracy, I believe cartography enjoys an enviable position of credibility and confidence among the people who see it. If you see it mapped, you believe.
That is precisely what you want the case to be, particularly in natural disasters. This cartography should be devoid of any attempt to deceive. Its only agenda should be to inform and enlighten.
That’s what made Trump’s marked-on map such a blasphemy: It attacked, on a fundamental level, truth, science and public trust. It wasn’t just a defacement of a public document, it was a defilement of a sacred trust.
Blow’s reaction is predicated in the notion that maps can’t lie, or at least don’t, or at least shouldn’t. Enter Mark Monmonier, the author of How to Lie with Maps (reviewed here), who was interviewed by CityLab about this kerfuffle. Even Monmonier, who has no illusions about maps’ claims to accuracy and objectivity, and who literally wrote the book on how hazard mapping can be misleading, seems to be sputtering:
Usually, attempts to falsify tend to happen before maps are published, and don’t try to contradict established scientific facts. You can put a spin on something by influencing the appearance of a map before it’s published. You can put a spin on things by determining what is and is not going to be mapped. Something that might put your administration in an unfavorable view, for example: Those maps won’t be part of the plan. […]
But the Trump map is unusual. I cannot find anything truly comparable. We had a map that was already out there that he actually mutilated, and in a very obvious way. This guy shows absolutely no subtlety at all. And then people try to make excuses for him. I have never seen anything like this.
Trump’s little stunt has revealed something very interesting about how we see maps.
California Wildfire Roundup
The San Francisco Chronicle’s 2018 California Fire Tracker is an interactive map of ongoing and contained wildfires—notably, at this moment, the Camp and Woolsey fires. It includes fire perimeter and air quality data. (Note: it’s glitchy on desktop Safari.)
Two Esri maps: a general wildfire map and a map of smoke from wildfires [Maps Mania]. Add to that a map of field damage reports in the area hit by the Camp Fire [Maps Mania].
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has produced a map of the damage from the Camp Fire based on satellite radar images. NASA Earth Observatory has maps and animations showing the impact of the Camp Fire on air quality and satellite images of the Woolsey Fire burn scar.
The New York Times has a map tracking air quality in California. Smoke from the fires has reached the east coast: an outcome predicted by atmospheric models (see above map).
This interactive map from NBC News that superimposes the Camp Fire on any location to help people outside California get a sense of how big these fires are. [Maps Mania]
A Look at GOES-16’s Imagery
This NOAA article looks at three kinds of imagery provided by the GOES-16 geostationary weather satellite: GeoColor, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (!), and full disk infrared imagery from the Advanced Baseline Imager. GOES-16 launched last November and is currently in the checkout phase before it replaces GOES-13 at 75° west latitude.