Amid Disastrous Information Pollution, NOAA Has to Issue a Release Debunking Hurricane Control
And an invite to my upcoming Sustain What chat on X's disastrous contribution to the information storm and what might replace it, if anything
Thanks to a tweet on X by the weather analyst Matthew Cappucci (yes, constructive use of X is tweeting in my lexicon), I learned of today’s release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offering clarity amid the superstorm of fakery on X, TikTok and elsewhere around recent devastating diasters. I’m posting it in full below so you can share away.
As Cappucci laments, and I agree, “It’s incredible that, in 2024, NOAA has to tweet a release affirming that scientists do not create or steer hurricanes.”
The release is below but I also want to be sure you add to your calendar a highly related Sustain What conversation I’m running on Monday, October 28 at 1 p.m. Eastern:
With X a Disaster in Disasters, Can Bluesky (or anything else) Fill the Gap?
You can watch and share on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and, yes, X/Twitter at @revkin (no streamling link there until showtime).
My guests are Jim Moffitt, a former Twitter engineer who successfully worked for years to boost the platform’s value in disaster warning and response, and Emily Liu, who is helping build Bluesky’s utility as an open social network.
For now, Bluesky is far too miniscule and inadequately resourced, to my eye, to come close to X’s power to connect in realtime. But the platform is growing rapidly, so it’s worth looking at how it might best be built to avoid the awful outcomes Twitter suffered in the transition to X under Elon Musk.
Bluesky is also becoming very popular with scientists and I recommend this living Google Doc: BlueSky for Scientists (although it’s quite dated):
As advance reading, you might click back to my 2022 post warning about what was coming: “Why a Twitter Implosion Could be a Disaster in Disasters.”
Why a Twitter Implosion Could be a Disaster in Disasters
In the first days of Elon Musk’s tumultuous takeover of Twitter, I alluded briefly to deep concerns being expressed by people working in emergency management and response over the potential threat to public safety and resilience should Twitter’s unique role as an open public square be badly damaged or destroyed.
Here’s my recent post on the problem around Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton:
Now TikTok and Musk's X Are Enabling Dangerous Speech Aimed at Courageous Hurricane Hunter Crews
I’m on the run home from a Lisbon meeting on climate risk communication with an insurance company so this’ll be quick. And I’m really angry.
Here’s the NOAA news trying to bat down the flood of dangerous fakery around weather disasters:
Fact check: Debunking weather modification claims
No one creates or steers hurricanes; the technology does not exist
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As the southeastern United States reels from the impact of two historic hurricanes, a large amount of disinformation about nonexistent weather manipulation technology is spreading across the internet, particularly on social media platforms. Below, NOAA identifies some of the inaccurate claims circulating online and provides science-based facts and information in response.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
GFDL fact sheet on hurricanes and human induced climate change
NOAA’s state of the climate fact sheet on Atlantic hurricanes and climate change
NOAA Weather Modification Website on the NOAA Library
CLAIM: The government is creating, strengthening and/or steering hurricanes into specific communities.
FACT: No technology exists that can create, destroy, modify, strengthen or steer hurricanes in any way, shape or form. All hurricanes, including Helene and Milton, are natural phenomena that form on their own due to aligning conditions of the ocean and atmosphere.
CLAIM: NOAA modifies the weather.
FACT: NOAA does not modify the weather, nor does it fund, participate in or oversee cloud seeding or any other weather modification activities. NOAA’s objective is to better understand and predict Earth’s systems, from the bottom of the seafloor to the surface of the sun. We are deepening our understanding and deploying new resources to improve forecasting and give communities earlier and more accurate warnings ahead of extreme weather events. NOAA is required by law* to track weather modification activities by others, including cloud seeding, but has no authority to regulate those activities.
*The Weather Modification Reporting Act of 1972 (15 Code of Federal Regulations § 908) requires anyone who intends to engage in weather modification activities within the United States, including cloud seeding, to provide a report to the Administrator of NOAA at least 10 days prior to undertaking the activity. Those reports are filed via email and may be found on the NOAA Central Library website.
CLAIM: The government is engaging in activities like cloud seeding to modify the weather.
FACT: NOAA does not fund or participate in cloud seeding or other weather modification projects. Cloud seeding is the only common weather modification activity currently practiced in the United States — typically by private companies in western mountain basins in winter in order to help generate snow in specific locations, or in the desert southwest to replenish water reservoirs in summer. The method has been used for decades in an effort to increase stored water in snowpack that melts in the spring to maintain adequate water supply.
Decades ago, between 1962 and 1982, NOAA provided support for research into whether hurricane intensity could be modified, known as Project STORMFURY. The research was not successful in modifying hurricanes and STORMFURY was discontinued. NOAA has not attempted to modify hurricane intensity and participate in cloud seeding since. For more information on this project, visit this NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory website.
CLAIM: NEXRAD Doppler radars are being used to steer hurricanes and are targeting specific communities.
FACT: Radars are tools for observation and are not able to direct the motion or intensity of air masses or storms. NEXRAD Doppler radars detect precipitation and the motion of the precipitation particles. The radar can determine an object’s location, shape, intensity and movement relative to the radar, but cannot alter or move those objects in any way. NEXRAD radars have been an essential weather forecasting tool since the 1990s and weather radars in general have been in use in the United States since the 1950s.
CLAIM: Solar geoengineering made hurricanes Helene and Milton worse.
FACT: Solar geoengineering, a theoretical practice which would modify the atmosphere to shade Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back into space, is not taking place at scale anywhere in the world. Geoengineering did not impact hurricanes Helene and Milton, let alone make them worse.
The Earth’s warming atmosphere can cause hurricanes to intensify rapidly and carry more moisture, allowing them to dump higher amounts of rain. Record to near-record warm ocean temperatures across the Gulf of Mexico allowed hurricanes Helene and Milton to rapidly intensify. Natural steering currents in the upper atmosphere determine a storm’s path.
CLAIM: NOAA is conducting solar geoengineering.
FACT: NOAA is not conducting solar geoengineering. NOAA studies the stratosphere and marine boundary layer with instruments on balloons and aircraft to help fill important gaps in our knowledge and inform decisions about the potential risks and benefits of solar geoengineering.
CLAIM: NOAA is involved with projects like HAARP and SCOPEX that modify weather.
FACT: NOAA is not associated with these projects, neither of which can modify the weather.
HAARP is a small National Science Foundation-funded facility in Gakona, Alaska, that conducts research on the ionosphere, 30 to 600 miles above the Earth’s surface. HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is not capable of influencing local weather at Earth’s surface, let alone tropical cyclones thousands of miles away. The HAARP system is basically a large radio transmitter.
SCOPEX, run out of Harvard University, was a scientific research project to study the behavior of small amounts of aerosols in the stratosphere to advance the understanding of solar geoengineering. The proposed scientific research project ended in March 2024 before field experiments were conducted.
The “Google Doc: BlueSky for Scientists” is not linked. Thanks
My bad -- you are correct -and I rescind the comment. Thanks egg on face sometimes happens