GOP Budget Cuts Would Devastate Hurricane And Weather Forecasting

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/29/767511/gop-budget-cuts-would-devestate-hurricane-and-weather-forecasting/

By Scott Lilly on Aug 29, 2012 at 12:31 pm

It’s late August. The Republicans are having their national convention. A huge tropical storm is bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast. So what’s new? We have had major hurricanes bearing down on the United States during four of the past six Republican conventions: Andrew in 1992, Frances in 2004, Gustav in 2008, and this year, Isaac.

But the Republican problem with hurricanes seems to go well beyond convention timing. A number of hurricanes have erupted into huge political issues, and it has almost always been at the expense of Republican candidates. This is not a coincidence: Republicans seem determined to underfund, undermanage, and understaff the government agencies that respond to hurricanes, putting lives and property at risk, as well as their political careers.

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The final two years of George W. Bush’s presidency were marked by a major controversy over budget cuts at the National Hurricane Center, a dispute that eventually cost the center’s director his job. But those controversies did not end with the conclusion of the Bush administration. When Republicans retook the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, they made deep cuts in the President Barack Obama’s 2011 request for the Polar Joint Satellite System, a system of new satellites needed to replace the old ones, which currently provide 85 percent of the data used in hurricane forecasting. House Republicans proposed further deep cuts in the program in fiscal year 2012.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Director Jane Lubchenco called the cuts “insanity.” She said that failure to fund the satellites would create a significant gap between the time the existing satellites failed and the new system became serviceable. Lubchenco said that the gap would be like “going backwards in 20 years’ time” in hurricane forecasting.

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While the final conference agreement for this past year’s appropriation bills restored a portion of the funds, the satellites were still funded at about $150 billion below the request. Following that restoration, the General Accountability Office confirmed the damage to the satellite development schedule, saying that, “there will likely be a gap in satellite data lasting 17 to 53 months from the time NPP (the existing system) is projected to cease operations and the first JPSS satellite begins to operate.”

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