U.S. Government Weather and Climate Services: Going Commercial?

Government-supplied satellites and data can be the right tool for the job, especially for national emergencies. Is there a commercial equivalent? Is it smart to create one?

A few weeks ago, I described how helpful the U.S. federal government’s agencies, products, and services were to me when Hurricane Helene formed and hit Florida’s bend. They were useful a second time when Hurricane Milton looked as if it would roar through my area (spoilers–it did). In Milton’s case, local forecasters had begun looking at a particular location in the Gulf of Mexico nearly two weeks before it hit our shore, which is quite a lead time for what became a Category 5 hurricane.

I wrote that article as someone who recently moved to Florida and is attempting to become situationally aware of the potential hurricanes menacing the state. While writing, several other rabbit holes appeared that I was tempted to investigate, but that article was already EXTREMELY lengthy. So, this article is my trip down those rabbit holes.

Cheap at Twice the Price

First, U.S. government-provided weather products are effective and needed. They are critical not just for individual decision-making but also for general dissemination into local media markets. An infrastructure and process is in place for local weather forecasters to pull data from various sources, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). I wrote the following about NOAA’s (specifically its National Weather Service) contributions:

The data NOAA uses to provide the comprehensive information in these graphics should be a model for any space business and its plans. Strangely, it’s valuable and helpful because it uses more than data from space technology alone to give U.S. citizens a heads-up.

That is to say that NOAA’s NWS publishes desirable products for the public. The desirability is because the products are comprehensive yet simple, relying on MORE than satellite-supplied data to get their points across. Yes, prop aircraft (and crazy crews) fly into these storms to get data. Buoys transmit storm data. There are computing resources and climate models that look at the collected data to provide reasonable prediction sets for a hurricane’s track. I would suggest that the people (and their experience) working with all that information are probably the most undervalued part of NOAA’s assets.

Of course, NOAA does more than hurricanes. However, its annual budget is minuscule, less than one-tenth of one percent (~$6.5 billion) of the U.S. federal budget in 2024 ($6.9 trillion). That spending is a bargain considering the losses in life and property (hundreds of lives and tens of billions of dollars so far) from Helene alone. I still believe both would have been much worse without those warnings and the time they gave for people in Helene’s way to get out (and for help to get ready). Milton hit the point home as people evacuated the Pinellas Peninsula days before the hurricane was forecasted to arrive.

Believe me when I observe that evacuating with the estimated 3,347 other inhabitants per square mile (1,292 per square kilometer) in the peninsula and county was no fun. But the tripwires–those hurricane warnings and path estimates–saved lives. My experience with Milton started with the local forecasters noting some kind of formation was likely to happen near Texas and head our way. That was nearly two weeks out from when Hurricane Milton hit our area.

Forecasters confirmed five days out that the depression had the characteristics of a hurricane and would head our way. That’s when my wife and I filled our cars with gas. That’s also when I started doing what I could with our home, moving things to (hopefully) the safest spot. I also started packing for a possible evacuation, probably three days before NOAA forecasted the hurricane would hit. I read every National Hurricane Center update and concluded that the forecast would be firmed up enough by then to decide to evacuate.

By the third day, it was apparent that whether St. Petersburg was directly hit or not, the hurricane would be large enough to impact it anyway. We left in both cars that afternoon as thousands of others also left the area. The roads were clogged, and we moved very slowly. But I saw no panic, just an orderly progression of drivers wanting to go before the hurricane arrived. I believe that with less notification, the exodus would have been more chaotic. NOAA’s updates and forecasts probably helped to minimize the chaos by providing more time to get ready and get out.

Despite the small budget, NOAA and the federal government provide a comprehensive service to the public, one that requires different ways to acquire and interpret data. As both hurricanes approached, I appreciated everything I could get from its National Hurricane Center dashboard. But I also understood that not everything from the NWS is perfect (based on…life). No forecast is perfect…that’s why it’s forecasting and not knowledge or truth. 

But there is a lot of math, methodology, and history backing those forecasts, which provides confidence. Even the dissemination of hurricane data seems to flow quickly to the public, freely available, and potentially useful. That critical information, as well as the NWS’ infrastructure, expertise, and processes, also exists.

It’s a fair bet that NOAA’s people are already reviewing some lessons learned from both storms. Once those are evaluated, the organization will likely change some processes in the hopes of providing better services than the last time. 

Baseline: Equal Quality and Free

Again, NOAA isn’t perfect, but its services are free to the public. Those services have provided life-saving information to U.S. citizens. It’s a bureaucracy that combines all sorts of expertise and technologies to offer millions of people a hurricane tripwire. While many, including myself, bash government bureaucracies and their inefficiencies, if one, such as NOAA, appears to be providing information that saves lives and property, then any notion to break up that bureaucracy should be scrutinized with suspicion. 

The government and its various bureaucracies are tools. Like any tool, they are better used in some situations than others. Hurricane warnings and tracking (and disaster management) are examples of situations when the government appears to be the better tool, as there are no commercial equivalents.

What commercial company exists that could replace NOAA and its hurricane forecasts? And even if one could replace NOAA, history shows that maybe commercial companies aren’t ideal for providing public services–at least not for free.

Addressing the first question. Is there any commercial alternative that provides an equivalently (at baseline) effective service to what the NWS offers? Because that should be the table stakes for any suggestion of breaking up NOAA to be even considered: a commercial alternative needs to provide at least the same level of climate products and services for free, with no friction points, because the information saves lives.

I don’t believe an alternative exists. Commercial weather companies, such as Accuweather or The Weather Company, exist but do not have the comprehensive data resources that NOAA has. Tomorrow.io and PlanetIQ have recently deployed satellites, but do they have a network of buoys or a hangar of aircraft to monitor and track hurricanes? If they did, would they provide the resulting data collection and analysis for free without strings attached? Do we want to place and trust critical climate information in the hands of an industry proud of breaking things?

“Disable You’re Ad-Blocker…” and Other Commercial Quirks

Think of what “free means” in the world of technology today. Usually, bionic-monocle-wearing mustache-twirling tech bros have vague plans to monetize products and services. These enshittenpreneurs (to borrow a name from Cory Doctorow) don’t know how but believe that if they show enough promise, mention AI a few times, and display a few CAD models, that a bigger, clueless, and desperate company will buy them up, so they never have to fulfill that promise. Instead of making things better, they make things worse. We’ve witnessed this in the space sector. Don’t feel sorry for the enshittenpreneurs; they usually still get lots of money. 

Imagine people like that trying to “commercialize” the emergency weather data the U.S. public relies on. Since it’s the commercial sector, the bars for success are low and different–make money, not save lives. Because of many current examples in business, it is not difficult to imagine the problematic results in today’s world, which are concerning.

Imagine an enshittenpreneur noodling around with the requirement to supply free weather data to the public. Well, there are ways to get around that and still “monetize.” 

Maybe there’s timing–people wishing for hurricane information warnings more than five days out can pay for that information. Or, maybe people will need to turn off their ad-blockers to see the critical information. There are all sorts of devious and friction-full ways for climate data to be enshittified, resulting in dead people and destroyed property.

That’s why I suggest a requirement enforcing no friction points to access–no gates whatsoever. That requirement means no interstitial pages asking for an email address or pop-ups demanding people identify a motorcycle in several pictures. It also means that an app installment is not required on a phone to gain access to data. 

There’s also the concept of ownership. If a commercial climate company is acquired, who is buying it? Is there the possibility that the buyer has motives other than money, such as helping another nation achieve a goal against the U.S.? 

Imagine when commercial companies providing these products get sued, frivolous or not (this is the U.S.--they will get sued). Then, U.S. citizens needing weather warnings might instead find themselves in the same pickle that Florida’s residents face in the insurance market–a lack of companies and products. And those that cater to Florida have jacked up their prices. Do U.S. citizens want something similar to replace an already functional system merely because the government runs it? This is not to say the government runs it well, but the investment is there, and generally, the products and services have improved.

Breaking up NOAA and commercializing its aspects presents many challenges that must not be lightly dismissed because “the commercial sector will take care of it.” Throwing away or breaking working tools tailored explicitly for particular challenges based on promises of some promising but nebulous “commercial tools” is not a great way to serve the public, especially considering the lives and property at risk.

Worse, the reason for breaking up NOAA is a pushback against science and facts. Some people, let’s call them the Cult of the Sharpie, believe that NOAA is disseminating information that undermines a political narrative. Considering the high probability of lost lives and property, usually suffered by the people who can least afford the damages from these storms, that particular rationale for breaking up NOAA is despicable.

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