A Mighty Wind

Hurricane season is underway and the National Hurricane Center is in considerable disarray. The problem is that the new director has lost the confidence of most of the senior staff.

Currently controversial questions of whether or not global warming will affect hurricane frequency or intensity are hardly central to NHC forecasters. Their key mission is predicting the behavior of tropical disturbances far enough in advance to minimimze the effect on life and property. We can't control hurricanes, but we usually can get out the their way, if we have sufficient warning.

Current methods have advanced to the point where forecasters have acquired considerable skill at predicting where a hurricane or tropical storm will go in the next 72 hours. They are somewhat less skillful at predicting storm intensity. Properly used, those 72 hours of warning can be very useful. Ships and planes can be re-routed, oil platforms can be battened down and evacuated, and people on shore can be warned to prepare for the storm, move inland, or adjust other plans.

I am sure that it was a bitter pill for forecasters when city, State, and Federal authorities all failed catastrophically to make use of thier warnings before the tragedies of Katrina and Rita. Bush, Chertoff, Brown, Blanco, and Nagin all deserved to be removed from office for their failures in that regard.

So how did Bill Proenza manage to get sideways with his staff? Jeff Masters, of Weather Underground, has been on the story today and previously. The key issue seems to be the QuikSCAT satellite. QuikSCAT is a valuable instrument that measures ocean surface wind speeds but it is ageing and failing. Proenza is a new guy, an outsider, and he started off by fueding with his NOAA bosses and by claiming that the imminent failure of QuikSCAT would seriously degrade the 72 hour hurricane forecast.

So why did this upset the senior forecasters so much? Firstly, the science behind the claim seemed shaky. Secondly, they don't want another quick fix QuikSCAT, they want the next generation new and improved model. Thirdly, Proenza has allegedly been somewhat duplicitous in the conduct of his campaign. Finally, they know that in Congress's rush to look like they are doing something about hurricanes, they will take the money for the new satellite from programs that they know are far more crucial - especially the hurricane hunter planes that can probe the interior of a hurricane far more thoroughly than the QuikSCAT.

Jeff's postings on this provide a good look at how a small but critical part of our government works.

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