Battered by last year's devastating Joplin tornado and 45 other severe weather incidents the past 10 years, Missouri has suffered tremendous loss of life and property in recent memory.
And in 2012, our nation is midway into a summer that has already spawned devastating storms, floods wildfires and heat waves. It's hard to imagine a less opportune time to cut funding for national weather forecasting.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what will happen unless Congress works with the White House to repeal mandatory budget cuts scheduled to hit federal programs in 2013. These "sequestration" cuts may lead to a $182 million reduction for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather satellite program - putting at risk the very sentinels that provide life-saving severe weather warnings.
With this devastating cut, development of a new generation of polarorbiting weather satellites will be delayed, risking an increase in what is already projected to be at least a 17-month gap in critical polar-orbiting weather satellite coverage beginning in 2017. Yet National Weather Service forecasts get 85 percent of their data from polar-orbiting NOAA weather satellites. Without this data, weather predictions may wildly miss the mark.
Indeed, last year NOAA ran models to see how accurate the forecast of the 2010 "snowmaggedon" blizzards would be without data from polarorbiting satellites. Their models misjudged the storm track by 200 to 300 miles and underestimated snowfall accumulations by at least 10 inches. Without these satellites, NOAA says hurricane tracking would suffer from the same degree of inaccuracy - a thought incomprehensible to coastal communities, where often the only defense is adequate time to prepare.
Referring to two major weather satellite systems in development - the Joint Polar Satellite System and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R Series (GOES R) - former astronaut and NOAA Deputy Administrator Kathryn Sullivan recently warned Congress, "These programs require stable and sufficient budgets in order to minimize disruptions that may lead to launch delays and cost increases."
Just think about it. Under the guise of getting our fiscal house in order in the short-term, our leaders in Washington would increase the longterm cost and delay perhaps beyond two years the introduction of badly needed satellite systems. This would happen with the knowledge that in 2011, economic damages throughout America from accurately forecasted severe storms amounted to an estimated $46.5 billion. Imagine the damages we will suffer in the future if weather forecasting capabilities are degraded and communities are not given timely and accurate warnings of major storms coming their way.
It should be noted the weather satellite cut is only a small part of the sequestration story - with other mandatory cuts to defense and other federal programs Americans count on amounting to $1.2 trillion over ten years. Respected economist Stephen Fuller of George Mason University says in 2013 the first round of cuts will:
• Cost the U.S. economy 2.14 million jobs, upping the unemployment rate by 1.5 percent.
• Reduce our GDP by $215 billion, or two-thirds of America's expected economic growth in 2013.
• Decrease personal earnings of the workforce by $109.4 billion.
We can't afford to let severe budget cuts take weather forecasting back to the Dark Ages. NOAA satellites save lives and money at a time when our weather is becoming more and more volatile. And Missouri is the nation's seventh most vulnerable state to severe weather, according to a study conducted for Kiplinger. Congress and the president should strive to avoid these and other draconian budget cuts, and work to ensure that citizens and communities continue to receive the accurate weather forecasts they've come to count on.
Marion C. Blakey is president and CEO of Aerospace Industries Association, based in Arlington, Va.