Weather forecasters develop time machine!

Bill Proenza, the (now) former head of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), has been fired by the US Department of Commerce for failing 'to demonstrate leadership', and creating bad blood amongst his staff. The fact that he was supposed be sowing bad blood amongst his staff appears to be forgotten, for the simple reason that he demonstrated plenty of leadership, but of the wrong sort.

Proenza was given the job to reform the NHC. Now, like any other large public sector organization in this country, National Weather Service staff are loathe to change anything. After all, they might need to learn something new or adapt to change, which distracts them from the important public sector goals of sitting on one's fat, lazy backside until pension day. For example, about thirty years ago the previously-independent National Weather Service (of which the NHC is a part) became a branch of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the employees are still sore about it today. Most of them were under the age of ten when it happened, but they don't let that stop them from harbouring a career-span of embittered rancour. Therefore, it can be seen that the job of reforming the NHC and irritating its employees are more or less synonymous. Indeed, Proenza was happily reforming NHC and upsetting his dogmatic staff for months, with his overlords in Washington DC perfectly happy with his performance. Unfortunately, he then chose to open his mouth and say something uncharacteristically intelligent.

This year, the NOAA celebrates its two hundredth anniversary. Happy birthday, NOAA. That's somewhat surprising, since just seven years ago NOAA celebrated its thirtieth birthday. It would be nice to think that NOAA had developed a time machine, after all just think how reliable weather forecasts would be if you could just skip back and forth in time. Unfortunately, it's just the usual public sector arse-hattery. Two hundred years ago President Jefferson ordered the creation of nautical charts of the US coast for the safe passage of ships, a role that is within NOAA's current remit.

Simultaneously, the NASA QuikSCAT satellite is nearing the end of its useful lifecycle (actually, it is past its design life) with no end in sight. QuikSCAT is a rare bird, one of the only space-borne scatterometers in operation around the globe. A space-borne scatterometer is a satellite that detects the roughness of the ocean surface, and because the roughness of the ocean is a direct result of surface wind we can retrieve surface wind data from that. Considering that surface weather stations are sparse over the ocean, and that 66% of the world's surface is ocean, one doesn't need to be a climatologist to realise how useful these instruments are for both operational forecasting and climate research.

Why then, asked Mr Proenza of Congress, are we spending $4 million to celebrate the 37-year-old NOAA's 200th anniversary, when one of the only instruments still in service capable of giving decent coverage surface wind estimates is about to grind to a halt for the very last time?

Suddenly, the happiness of the NHC staff became of prime importance, Mr Proenza was 'removed from service'. Like an obsolete satellite, the wreckage of his career splashed down into the middle of a lonely, unobserved ocean.