Dr. Daniel Swain

It appears that staff fired today include meteorologists, data scientists responsible for maintaining weather predictive models, and technicians responsible for maintaining the nation’s weather instrumentation network (among many others). 2/11

The U.S. NWS is a truly world-class meteorological predictive service, perhaps singularly so. Its cost of operation is only ~$3-4/yr per taxpayer—equivalent to a single cup of coffee—and yields a truly remarkable return on investment (at least 10 to 1, and perhaps 100 to 1). 3/11

NOAA & NWS collectively offer tens to hundreds of billions of dollars each year in economic benefit through combination of averted losses & efficiencies gained. More importantly, NWS saves countless lives by issuing high-quality weather forecasts & extreme weather warnings. 4/11

Despite widespread discussion to the contrary, the fact of the matter is that the private sector, as it presently exists, simply cannot quickly spin up to fill any void› left by substantial dismantling of NOAA and/or the NWS. 5/11

I work extensively with weather and climate scientists who work in the private sector—all of whom do good and important work that I greatly respect—yet even within the private sector there is near unanimous agreement that NOAA and NWS are indispensable. 6/11

In fact, though this is not widely known, most or all private weather companies in U.S. (including forecasts that you see on TV or your favorite app) are built directly atop backbone of taxpayer-funded instrumentation, data, predictive modeling, & forecasts provided by NOAA. 7/11

Further, even a temporary or partial interruption in NOAA/NWS 24/7/365 lifesaving services—which are often used in an hour-by-hour (even minute-by-minute) context during extreme weather events and other emergencies—would be devastating. 8/11

The NWS is a critical public utility, and it would be extremely difficult to rebuild if torn down. This is not, in short, an acceptable setting in which to “move fast and break things.” 9/11

To be clear: If there were to be large staffing reductions at NOAA and NWS—at appears is now indeed underway, with credible reports of larger further cuts on horizon—there will be people who die in extreme weather events & related disasters who would not have otherwise. 10/11

The now-confirmed and rumored additional cuts to come at NOAA/NWS are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters. 11/11