Letter: Environmental Monitoring Satellites Not Expendable

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The new administration in Washington, D.C., is moving quickly to fulfill campaign promises to defund all federal climate change research programs.

Ending U.S. climate change research would deal a very serious blow to researchers around the globe as they develop strategies for coping with sea level rise and the whole array of problems that a warming planet will bring in coming decades.

But ending those climate research programs would also bring serious unintended consequences right here in Southwest Washington in the very near future. If carried out as planned, the administration’s moves would not only shrink or eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, but would also remove funding for the array of environmental monitoring satellites that are operated by NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which includes the National Weather Service.

The continuous stream of images and complex data from these satellites provide the backbone of information that makes possible the accurate warnings and forecasts that we take for granted day by day. The sophisticated computer models that generate our weather forecasts and warnings would be useless without the continuous stream of data being fed from these satellites. 

As someone who worked with the National Weather Service in the late 1970s, I am constantly amazed by the improvements in weather forecasts and warnings in the last couple of decades. Predicting the strength and movement of storms such as Katrina and Sandy days in advance would have been unheard of in the 1970s.

Here in Southwest Washington the growing understanding of “atmospheric river” events like the one that brought our devastating floods and coastal winds in December 2007 has been made possible solely as a result of satellite observations.



Accurate weather information has a much larger impact on society than just the ordinary forecast we track on our smartphones or hear on the radio. Decision makers who manage electric grids, maritime shipping, water supplies, agriculture, commercial fisheries and other natural resources all rely on continuous weather data and accurate forecasts made possible by the environmental satellites that the new administration would like to cut.

One climate scientist has likened the loss of these environmental satellites to turning off the headlights while driving at night at high speed toward the Grand Canyon. Eliminating funding for climate research satellites at this crucial time in the global climate crisis is unconscionable. Removing the tools that forecasters need for making accurate weather forecasts and warnings is just plain stupid.

Don Watt,

Chehalis, in a letter to the editor