Vindauga

I’ve been meaning to write about this but, honestly, I didn’t fully understand what was going on.

The [now former] director of the National Hurricane Center, Bill Proenza, managed to piss off a big chunk of the folks at the NHC. Apparently there was some strife before (not terribly supportive of the forecasters) but then he made some claims the QuikSCAT satellite and people started calling for him to resign. There is a new satellite being used by NOAA that measures wind speeds at sea surfaces. This is a big deal, since the satellite can look everywhere while previous measurements required a sensor to be present (clearly then we only know sea surface winds in limited places). Basically, Proenza said that the NHC couldn’t function without this satellite. This really pissed folks off. Its apparently not entirely true.

I gather that this satellite is failing or aging or something. Proenza’s statements caused a kind of panic in congress and bills were immediately drawn up to fund another one at a cost of $375 million. But, according to my go-to guy Jeff Masters, the science on the claim that QuikSCAT is necessary to forecasting isn’t misleading.

I don’t understand why this would cause so many to ask for his removal. I just don’t understand the politics or the science enough to see what is causing the hub-bub. But, it turns out it was a big enough deal that NOAA put Proenza on leave until they could find someplace else to place him. Meanwhile NOAA put Ed Rappaport in charge. So, the hurricane center has a new director.

On a side note NOAA is trying to re-brand its corporate identity. Most people don’t realize that NOAA is the federal agency in charge of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, its two most visible departments. So, NOAA wants to change the names of both departments to NOAA Weather Service and NOAA Hurricane Center (nice job keeping the acronyms). This is going to cost a bunch of money but the idea is that it will be easier to get funding (which, by the way, is part of the reason that the satellite thing is a big deal; if a satellite is most important for forecasting then you don’t really need hurricane hunter aircraft, which have had their funding slashed). Also, NOAA is putting on a bogus 200 year anniversary party to the tune of $4 million (Proenza criticized these things, by the way). I suspect this celebration is intended to generate more funding but it seems like a waste.

Don’t get me wrong. NOAA is having funding issues; its hard to get folks excited about the weather until the weather immediately affects them. And, most folks don’t know that who runs the NWS and the NHC but dropping that agency into political turmoil seems like a bad idea in order to capture more funding.