Yep Gavin, and the other big concern I have is any potential future impact on ALL the global weather models that underpin the basis of forecasts and warnings in every country.
NOAA in the US operate a huge network of observation platforms ranging from their own satellites, weather stations, buoys (a number of which are part of the network of tropical Pacific buoys which monitor ENSO), and a number of hurricane hunter
aircraft. They all contribute a big share of critical obs data that models need to initialise on before they can produce forecasts. This is especially the case with satellite data which makes up a massive portion of such obs data over the planet.
If this data were to suddenly become unavailable because of staffing and funding cuts, it would have a big impact on the accuracy of forecasts and warnings. We'd essentially be going backwards by many years.
Even when COVID was peaking earlier this decade, the impact that less observation data such as from aircraft, etc had were clearly visible in the observation impact stats for model forecasts.
Needless to say, the implications of less accurate warnings for deadly weather systems are obvious.
Because of the sheer amount of critical resources that NOAA owns and contributes to the global effort in forecasting, it's considered highly unlikely that the private weather industry would be able to fill the void if those resources were lost
(and especially because commercial providers of forecasts and warnings can't completely replace a national weather agency whose very purpose is to name that info freely available to the public).
The implications of all this are very far reaching and affect the world, not just the US.
Ken.
