Was the
severe weather system
culminating in yesterday’s Oklahoma City tornado intensified — or even
created — by climate change? That question will almost certainly be
batted back and forth in the media over the next few days. After all, there is
plenty of scientific evidence that climate change intensifies weather in general, but there remain
legitimate questions about how — and even if — it intensifies tornadoes in specific.
One
thing, however, that shouldn’t be up for debate is whether or not we
should be as prepared as possible for inevitable weather events like
tornadoes. We obviously should be — but there’s an increasing chance
that we will not be, thanks to the manufactured crisis known as
sequestration.
As the
Federal Times
recently reported, sequestration includes an 8.2 percent cut to the
National Weather Service. According to the organization representing
weather service employees, that means there is “no way for the agency to
maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices”
and also means “people are going to be overworked, they’re going to be
tired,
they’re going to miss warnings.”
Summarizing the problem, the
American Institute of Physics
put it bluntly: “The government runs the risk of significantly
increasing forecast error, and the government’s ability to warn
Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as
hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised.”
The good news is that the National Weather Service station in Norman, Okla., had a warning in effect for
16 minutes before the most recent Oklahoma City tornado hit. That’s
better than the 13 minute average so, thankfully, more people probably had more time than usual to evacuate or find safe shelter.
But what about the next time around? Will we be as ready as we can and should be? The answer is maybe not.
Though the past few years saw a
record
number of billion-dollar weather cataclysms, the weather service
remains a perennial target for budget cuts and already has nearly a
10 percent employment vacancy rate — and those realities may be damaging its long-term ability to warn the public about severe weather events. As the
Washington Post reports:
The
cash-strapped National Weather Service is facing increasing scrutiny
over its inferior computer modeling power compared to international
peers and is anticipating a likely gap in weather satellite coverage.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office ranked the pending
satellite gap among the top 30 threats facing the Federal government.
The
Department of Commerce warned that not only will the loss of satellite
data and imagery diminish the quality of forecasts, but so will other
important weather data surrendered by spending cuts.
Before
you dismiss that as esoteric, nerdy, overly technical and therefore
just abstract, check out what the president of the American
Meteorological Society says it
means in practice:
The
public may take for granted a tornado warning or satellite loop of an
approaching hurricane. Likewise, the public probably just assumes that
they will have 5- to 9-day warning of storms like Sandy; 15 to 60
minutes lead time for tornadic storms approaching their home; an airline
with appropriate data for safe air travel; or a military with reliable
information to avoid hazardous weather on a mission protecting our
freedom. However, these capabilities “can” and “will” worsen/degrade
if we cut weather balloon launches, cut investments in the latest
computing technology for our models, reduce Doppler radar maintenance,
delay satellite launches, or shatter employee morale … I am honestly
concerned that we will regress in capability and this will jeopardize
lives, property, and our security.
Following in the
footsteps of former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, conservatives faced with these self-evident facts have taken to
Fox News to cite the problems
previous flat budgets
have already created to call for a wholesale elimination of the
National Weather Service. It’s a classic self-fulfilling sophistry of
the right: Ignore the positive work an agency does, keep the agency’s
budget flat so that its capabilities do not keep up with the times, then
cite the agency’s reduced capabilities as justification to keep cutting
it.
Perhaps, though, the devastation in Oklahoma City will serve
as a reminder of why that’s the wrong path. After all, the wreckage is
an explicit commentary on how bad things can be even when our weather
forecasting system works — and, thus, an implicit reminder of how much
worse
things could be if it doesn’t. It is also a reminder that we shouldn’t
think of weather forecasting as the insignificant television arena of
dim-witted
Brick Tamlands, but instead as an integral part of homeland security infrastructure.
When
the ideology of austerity and Congress’s manufactured crises like the
sequestration collectively jeopardize that infrastructure, we are
needlessly inviting unnecessary and tragic consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment