Weather company does not support Project 2025 plans for weather forecasting agencies (2024)

News that a far-right initiative promoted by former Trump administration officials would make drastic cuts to the country’s weather tracking and forecasting agencies has drawn criticism from a forecasting service named in that initiative.

AccuWeather announced that it does not support the nearly 1,000-page text, Project 2025, and its plans to commercialize the National Weather Service, the forecasting service said in a statement on July 10.

“AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service should fully commercialize its operations,” AccuWeather Chief Executive Officer Steven R. Smith said in the statement. “The authors of Project 2025 used us as an example of forecasts and warnings provided by private sector companies without the knowledge or permission of AccuWeather.”

The initiative’s proposal argued that Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings not coming from the weather service but from private companies such as AccuWeather.

The company said it has long supported the mandate of the National Academies Fair Weather: Effective Partnerships in Weather and Climate Services report. This clarified “the roles of the public, private, and academic sectors of the American Weather Enterprise, which has served the country well for decades,” the statement read.

“Each sector plays a critical role in understanding, observing, forecasting and helping warn communities of danger; and plays an important part in building a weather-ready nation,” the company continued. “AccuWeather played an important role, along with other stakeholders, in setting the foundation for the release of the Fair Weather Report.”

This approach to forecasting, supported by the National Research Council, the National Weather Association, and the American Meteorological Society and enshrined into federal law, has saved “countless lives and significantly reduced the adverse impact of weather on the economy by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

The value of the National Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is best used when the government focuses on a strong comprehensive weather infrastructure, breaking down weather data and issuing warnings and watches to the public when there is a risk to life and property, according to the statement.

“Further focus by NOAA on these specific important roles, as opposed to other distracting activities, are critical in order for the agency to fulfill its mission and life-saving impact, working collaboratively with the entire American weather enterprise,” the statement continued.

AccuWeather’s partnership with NOAA and several government agencies around the world that provides “life-saving weather alerts with the public across our free AccuWeather digital properties” for “billions of people worldwide,” the company said. This includes providing weather alerts from NOAA on its AccuWeather Network and AccuWeather NOW streaming channel at no cost.

The company’s goal has never been to “take over the provision of all weather information,” Smith said.

The proposal within Project 2025 that calls for the commercialization of the National Weather Service would require Americans to pay for weather news from what has commonly been a free service, according to the travel website Outside.

Written by former President Donald Trump’s former chief financial officer of the Department of Commerce Thomas Gilman, the document argued that “forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.”

By turning the weather service into something Americans can pay for, Project 2025′s authors suggest it would “ensure the taxpayer dollars are invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high-quality research and weather data.”

Proposals targeted the agencies’ efforts to address climate change. In its call to dismantle NOAA, which is made up of six agencies including the National Weather Service, the proposal claimed it is one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,” Gilman wrote.

“That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions,” Gilman continued. “It should be broken up and downsized.”

Gilman suggested reviewing the National Hurricane Center and the National Environmental Satellite Service’s data “without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.” He then said cuts should be made to the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research’s budget and staff, claiming it is “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism.”

Finally, Gilman proposes replacing appointed roles at the Weather Service and NOAA with people loyal to Trump.

Agencies are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area,” he wrote.