Two congressional Democrats are warning about the risks of the Trump administration’s cuts to a weather satellite program after a report from the Government Accountability Office found that the administration’s changes to the program “could put vital weather observations at risk.”
In a Monday letter to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Neil Jacobs, Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Gabe Amo asked for answers about how the agency and the administration evaluated the restructuring of a NOAA geostationary weather satellite program to replace the current generation of satellites in the 2030s. They say the changes aimed for cost savings at the expense of creating a “less advanced, less capable next generation of weather satellites.”
The Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) program initially planned a series of six satellites with a projected lifecycle cost of $19.6 billion. The Trump administration restructured the program, reducing the number of satellites to four and dropping the number of instruments on the satellites from five to two. Those changes were motivated in part by a desire to limit the satellites’ ability to be used for climate research, CNN reported. The changes reduced the expected cost of the program to $13 billion.
But the GAO analysis, released to the public on Friday, concludes that, given the administration’s changes, “it is unclear whether GeoXO will improve, or even continue, the functionality available in the current generation of satellites.”
Lofgren and Amo criticize the cuts to the satellite program as “foolish” and “self-defeating,” describing them as part of “irrational and ideological attacks” by the administration on NOAA’s core functions. Lofgren is the top Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Amo is the top Democrat on that panel’s subcommittee on the environment.
“Two fewer satellites and three fewer scientific instruments are not line items in a budget,” they write. “They represent a concrete, tangible weakening of America’s ability to understand the weather, the climate, and the world around us. They also signify the narrowing of America’s scientific horizons and the loss of its scientific ambition under the Trump Administration. While the rest of the world races to improve weather forecasting capabilities as fast as possible, the Trump Administration is determined to hold this country back. We now confront the real possibility that America’s next generation of weather satellites will be no better – or even worse – than the generation in orbit today.”
A program manager at NOAA told the GAO that the agency concurred with its recommendations to document the new cost estimate for the program, update contingency plans to address potential gaps in the collection of weather data and other scenarios and complete technology readiness reports for each instrument.
Read more about this issue at CNN.