U.S. hurricane forecasters losing critical access to government data

• U.S. to suspend data sharing from three meteorological satellites after July
• Data loss hinders ability to monitor hurricanes accurately
• Hurricane forecasters left using half of previous remote sensing data

LOS ANGELES - Nine months after Hurricane Helene ripped through Shirley Scholl's home in Florida, inundating it with four feet of storm surge and sewage, her family can finally see some rebuilding progress.

Crews working on the skinny island of Clearwater Beach just off the coast have started to elevate the remains of the structure more than 13 feet (4 metres) to meet new federal building regulations in response to the devastating hurricane.

The disaster in September 2024 killed at least 250 people and caused nearly $79 billion in damages, making it the deadliest hurricane in the U.S. in 20 years, according to the National Weather Service.

"We had to take everything in the whole house down to the studs," said Lisa Avram, Scholl's daughter, who is overseeing the reconstruction.

But as families rebuild from last year's storms, this year's Atlantic hurricane season is underway, with even more risk than before.

Not only do forecasters warn it will likely be busier than average, with three to five "major" hurricanes predicted, but the job of forecasting has become more challenging.

The U.S. Department of Defense last month surprised hurricane forecasters by announcing it was suspending data sharing from three of its meteorological satellites, cutting the available data that meteorologists use by about half.

The data sharing has helped forecasters accurately pinpoint the size, location and intensity of hurricanes for two decades.

"It's all sorts of problematic," said Michael Lowry, a hurricane specialist with television station WPLG in Miami, Florida, and formerly of the National Hurricane Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA issued an internal message announcing the service would end no later than June 30. 

After a last minute intervention by the space agency NASA, NOAA announced the service would extend until no later than July 31 and was being suspended to "mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk."

"[The data sets] were really important for telling us how strong a hurricane currently is, but also how strong it might get," Lowry said.

These are not run-of-the-mill satellites tracking things from high above the clouds as seen on radar images but operate in low polar orbits using microwaves to “see into” a hurricane in ways other satellites cannot, according to Lowry.

Without them, the ability for forecasters to issue early warnings is hobbled, he said.

"With less time to prepare for a hurricane, people can't evacuate. You have a lot more people and lives that are at risk," Lowry said, adding that emergency management services cannot pre-position resources such as search-and-rescue teams that look for survivors.

The loss of data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) means the amount of remote sensing information forecasters can access drops by half, Lowry said.

With three fewer government satellites available to forecasters, the remaining satellites may only produce information on a strengthening hurricane every six to 12 hours instead of every few hours, giving storms a much bigger window to grow without being observed, he said.

Traditional satellites offer limited detail during the day and produce even less at night.

"The concern is what many in our community would call a 'sunrise surprise,' where you go to bed at eight o'clock at night and it's a tropical storm," Lowry said.

"And we wake up in the morning and it's on the doorstep, and it's a Category Three or Four hurricane," he said.

'Giant loss'

Thousands of miles from the tropical hurricane zone, sea ice is closely tracked by the DMSP satellites as well.

Climatologists who study polar sea ice and climate change have used these data sets for decades, said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at the nonprofit research organization Climate Central.

Losing access is "quite shocking," Labe said.

"These satellites … have really told the story of Arctic climate change for the last almost five decades now," he said.

"It's been a real key data for cryosphere science," allowing observation of long-term sea ice variability and trends, he added.

Coastal communities such as those in Alaska rely on sea ice information to help prepare for storms and flooding and make decisions about transportation and hunting.

Labe said other satellites controlled by countries such as Japan have the same capability.

But Japan's systems have not been operating as long, and now there is a "scramble" to match timelines of different satellites so there is no gap in the record.

Climate scientists need "more data, not less," and the satellites served a wide variety of climate research, he said.

"It's a giant loss," Labe said.

A U.S. Navy spokesperson confirmed to Context in an email that DMSP data sharing would end on July 31.

The DMSP is scheduled to be discontinued altogether in September 2026," given it "no longer meets our information technology modernization requirements," according to the spokesperson.

In Florida, Lisa Avram and her family live day-to-day on tenterhooks.

Losing satellite information seems like a "seriously dangerous proposition" for herself and other storm survivors who have their houses in various phases of the elevation.

"We're in hurricane season, so when your house is up in the air, they're even more dangerous because they're not secured," she said.

"I worry every time the wind blows here if my mom's house is going to be OK."

(Reporting by Rachel Parsons; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)