“Connecting the Dots” March 2025

How to Find Climate Data and Science the Trump Administration Doesn’t Want You To See. The Conversation takes a deep dive into climate data preservation; here’s an excerpt: “…You can also find archived climate and environmental justice datasets and tools on the Public Environmental Data Partners website. Other groups are archiving datasets linked in the Data.gov data portal and making them findable in other locations. Individual researchers are also uploading datasets in searchable repositories like OSF, run by the Center for Open Science. If you are worried that certain data currently still available might disappear, consult this checklist from MIT Libraries. It provides steps for how you can help safeguard federal data...”

A Surprising Factor Helped Supercharge Florida’s Catastrophic 2023 Hurricane Idalia. Salt water and fresh water don’t mix very well, and apparently this has implications for hurricane intensity. Gizmodo explains: “…The team found that the usual suspects—warm sea surface temperatures, ocean heat beneath the surface, and low vertical wind shear all played a role in Idalia’s intensification. But the team found that a freshwater plume—including river discharge into the Gulf—created a density gradient between the surface water and deeper, cooler water, allowing Idalia to continue to draw strength from the warmth of the Gulf’s surface…”

Hurricanes are Shifting South. Here’s Why That’s a Serious Problem. StudyFinds has the results of new research; here’s an excerpt: “…The analysis, published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, shows a southward migration in the genesis location of Atlantic hurricanes since 1979. A hurricane’s genesis is the point at which a tropical disturbance strengthens into a full-fledged tropical cyclone. This is different than global trends observed in other ocean basins, where tropical cyclones typically show a poleward shift. Many of the areas that now find themselves in the new hurricane hotspot include small island nations in the Caribbean, as well as parts of Central America and the southeastern United States. Unlike the U.S. Gulf Coast, which has spent decades investing in hurricane preparedness, many of these newly affected regions have fewer resources and less infrastructure to handle major storms...”

The True Cost of Trump’s Cuts to NOAA and NASA. Here’s the intro to an analysis at Time.com: “If you’ve ever avoided a hurricane, ducked a tornado, evacuated ahead of a wildfire, or merely relied on a weather forecast to take an umbrella to work, you likely have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to thank. As America’s—and indeed the world’s—leading weather and climate watchdog and the parent organization of the National Weather Service (NWS), NOAA runs a standing army of personnel and hardware on and off the planet to keep an eye on the Earth’s often stormy temperament. The agency owns or operates 13 weather satellites; manages more than 200 deep-water buoys; and gathers weather and climate information from a storm of data provided by no fewer than 10,600 state, local, and federal governments, as well as universities and private companies nationwide…”

Weather Balloons Popped by Elon Musk’s DOGE: Why the Cuts Hurt Forecasting. USA Today explains the critical role weather balloons serve for meteorologists around the world: “…Specifically, according to an analysis by USA TODAY, weather balloons have stopped in three locations, reduced to once a day at six locations and are intermittent at two additional locations. Why does it matter? “Taking weather balloons offline in the heartland of the United States … will directly affect the NWS’s ability to predict severe weather, including tornado-producing thunderstorms,” wrote Marc Alessi of the Union of Concerned Scientists in an online post Monday. “This could lead to more severe weather-related deaths that could have otherwise been avoided...”

Why Weather Balloons are So Important in Weather Prediction. NOAA has a good explainer; here’s an excerpt: “…Radiosonde observations technically provide only pressure, temperature, and relative humidity data; the tracked position of a radiosonde is actually called a rawinsonde observation and is used to obtain wind speed and direction. However, meteorologists and other data users frequently refer to them as part of the radiosonde observation. The radiosonde flight can last in excess of two hours, and during this time the radiosonde can ascend to over 115,000 feet (35,000 m) and drift more than 125 miles (200 km) from the release point. During the flight, the radiosonde is exposed to temperatures as cold as -130°F (-92°C) and air pressures of only a few hundredths of what is found on the Earth’s surface. When the balloon has expanded beyond its elastic limit (20-25 feet in diameter) and bursts, the radiosonde returns to Earth via a small parachute. This slows its descent, minimizing the danger to life and property...”

DOGE is Making it Harder to Track Extreme Weather. What Could Go Wrong? Plenty. The New York Times (paywall) explains: “…The agency’s scientists help build the forecasting models used to predict what the weather will look like next week, and what your children’s climate might look like half a century from now. Farmers use the agency’s weather data to plan their crop planting and harvesting, and urban firefighters rely on it to anticipate high wind events and prepare for downed power lines and evacuations. But staffing reductions at NOAA’s National Weather Service offices have suspended the launch of weather balloons that collect wind, temperature and humidity readings from Alaska to Albany...”

There Was a Major Disaster Declaration Every 4 Days in 2024, Analysis Shows. CNN.com has the post; here’s an excerpt: “…Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that extreme weather events around the world are becoming more intense. “One of the big drivers of these extreme events is the fact that as air gets warmer, it can hold more water vapor. What this means is that rainfalls are getting heavier,” said Ed Kearns, chief data officer at First Street Foundation, a non-profit focused on weather risk research. “So, hurricanes will have stronger precipitation, thunderstorms will have stronger precipitation, and this is driving a lot of those disasters that you’re seeing...”

Atmospheric Rivers are Getting Bigger, Wetter and More Frequent. Here are a few excerpts from an explainer at Associated Press (AP): “…The heavy rain and wind events most known for dousing California and other parts of the West have been getting bigger, wetter and more frequent in the past 45 years as the world warms, according to a comprehensive study of atmospheric rivers in the current issue of the Journal of Climate…Scientists have long predicted that as climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas makes the air warmer, it holds more moisture, which means bigger, nastier atmospheric rivers are coming in the future. This week’s study shows that a more moist future is already here…”

Hurricane Dorian Was Worthy of a Category 6 Rating? With warmer oceans fueling stronger hurricanes, does the Saffir-Simpson hurricane rating scale need a reboot? Meteorologist Jeff Masters reports for Scientific American: “Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes are rare. Only 7% of the 243 hurricanes observed since accurate satellite measurements began in 1983 have reached that catastrophic intensity. And it is truly exceptional to see a category 5 hurricane as strong as Hurricane Dorian, which powered ashore on Great Abaco Island in The Bahamas on September 1, 2019, with sustained winds of 185 mph and gusts up to 220 mph. Winds of this strength would make Dorian worthy of a category 6 rating, if it existed. (For those of you unfamiliar with me, know that there is already a Category 6—it’s the name of a blog I co-author with Bob Henson over at Weather Underground, specializing in daily updates of global tropical cyclone activity)...”