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Twice a day, across the country, the National Weather Service launches a fleet of balloons into space to collect what’s known as “upper atmosphere data” — detailed measurements of temperature, humidity and pressure. Before they happen, balloons gather information that guides the world’s forecasters, and helps the rest of us figure out how to prepare for the future. Recently, however, the NWS has reportedly been sending out fewer balloons than in the past, reducing meteorologists’ confidence in their own forecasts.
This shortcoming points to a wider issue. Partly as a result of staff cuts and funding cuts, information from the government has been slowly disappearing. Some organizations have stopped research and monitoring projects; others have deleted records and databases. Together, these new realities risk blurring our understanding of the economy, public health, and the environment—all of which can make it difficult to assess the state of the country and the world.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which houses the National Weather Service, lost about 15 percent of its workforce last year through layoffs and acquisitions. Meteorologists he told it Politics that the cuts have affected the schedule of NWS weather balloon launches in the western United States, creating “large data holes to create bad weather forecasts.” CBS News information that similar reductions in weather balloon launches have been taking place elsewhere across the country, and that meteorologists now have less data to work with.
Accurate forecasting is essential in preparing for major disasters; they can even save lives. Alan Gerard, a weather analyst and former NWS meteorologist, emphasized Its substack earlier this week that while the exact impact of these launch changes remains unclear, “climate experts’ confidence in the models and their own ability to analyze some conditions has been undermined by the lack of high-level weather data.” (A NOAA spokeswoman told me that “most of the top sites are operating on schedule,” that “any sites doing limited launches are due to temporary resource or equipment constraints,” and that “NOAA’s climate model performance shows no evidence of overall disruption to any approved launch schedule.”)
Administration spending cuts have also affected some of the international data collection that the United States used to fund. While the Trump administration provided funding for some foreign aid programs last year (this is estimated causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide), the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ended up cutting more than 100 of its programs. New World Wormswhich has been disrupting cattle ranching in Central America and Mexico for the past few years. Last month, it crossed into the United States, threatening the country’s already dwindling supply of beef. Monitoring alone may not have stopped the caterpillars from spreading—and there’s no evidence to suggest that U.S. funding cuts caused the current outbreak—but charting the flies’ movements has long been an important part of prevention.
In making certain data private or change collection methods at the behest of the president, this administration is poking holes in the public record. Data.gov removed nearly 3,400 data sets in the first month of Donald Trump’s second term, information to rub from the Census Bureau, Office of Justice Programs, CDC, and more. CDC monitors pregnancy risk in the US in an effort to prevent infant mortality; staff cuts have reportedly made the news unattainable. Since 1995, the USDA has been tracking the number of US households experiencing food insecurity; the Trump administration it has stopped investigation of the data in September, claiming in a press release that this information was “political” and “expensive” to produce, and “nothing more than fear.”
Government data is far from infallible (and, as history has shown, it can be to be driven) But the cumulative effect of these recent changes is an erosion of public understanding—and the potential for effective policymaking. The Federal Reserve, for example, bases its interest rate decisions around Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data, among other sources. Last year, when the government shutdown delayed the release of the data, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell compared the experience to “driving in the fog.” It was the first time in the 77 years that the BLS failed to provide America’s unemployment rate. Relying only on private data, the Fed was forced to cut rates without a comprehensive reading of the US labor force.
Earlier this year, when the Trump administration took down an online database called the CIA World Factbook, which collected information about countries around the world, my colleague David A. Graham. he wrote that his death was another part of the White House information war. “Democracy,” he explained, “requires voters to have access to accurate and shared information so that they can evaluate the claims that the government makes.” Missing balloons add to the inaccuracies in weather forecasts, confirming the idea that government information can be even more unreliable—and that, perhaps, we don’t need to continue funding NOAA at all.
In this way, a partial information blackout can lead to more and more distrust in American institutions, creating a vacuum in which conspiracy theories can flourish. Transparency may not completely prevent misinformation, but it can be a powerful solution.
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Today’s news
- Last night, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner he suspended his campaign after being accused of sexual harassment (which he denied). The Democrats will choose a replacement to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins.
- United States and Iran they exchanged fire for the second day in a rowwith both sides expanding their attacks as the fragile ceasefire continues to unravel.
- The family of a Mexican man shot by an ICE officer Tuesday in Houston demands an independent investigation. Federal agents alleged that he tried to hit an ICE agent with his car, but did not provide additional evidence.
Dispatches
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Evening Read
A New Way to Use Analog
By Nancy Walecki
When the iPod Nano was first released, in 2005, it cost $199 and was sold with the promise of unlimited access. This year, Celeste Stange bought her 8 gigabyte magenta model on eBay for $69 for a completely different reason. Every time he would select a song on Spotify to stream, he would think about the millions of other songs he could listen to instead and become paralyzed with music FOMO, he told me. “Now I only have what is here.”
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this magazine.
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