{"id":42434,"date":"2025-08-04T08:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T08:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42434\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T08:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T08:49:07","slug":"donald-trumps-climate-cuts-mean-australian-forecasting-is-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42434\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s climate cuts mean Australian forecasting is at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Among those systems at risk is the Argo float program<\/a>, a swarm of drifting devices that measures the temperature and salinity of the top two kilometres of oceans every 10 days. The US funds more than half the $60 million array, including 380 of these floats in Australia\u2019s own search and rescue domain.<\/p>\n

The looming funding cuts may mean the US removes 900 floats a year. It may also stop paying the $2 million annual data transmission costs and sack the eight-person team in the US that processes the information for global use.<\/p>\n

Short-term ocean forecasts, particularly in the tropics where US Argo floats predominate, would be rendered useless for most applications, should the cuts occur. A hint that national security may be compromised is the risk posed to the related Bluelink ocean prediction service, which won a Department of Defence Eureka Prize for outstanding science in safeguarding Australia in 2024.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), among a slew of climate labs and co-operative institutes with 420 staff that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been earmarked to close<\/a> next year. As The Conversation noted in an article last week<\/a>, Australia has relied on PMEL for early warnings to declare every El Nino and La Nina for the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

Similarly, a vital component of Australia\u2019s ACCESS (Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator) climate model is developed primarily at NOAA\u2019s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Without GFDL, the pace of model progress would be halved, affecting a program that underpins all Australian climate projections used by industry and government for planning and climate risk.<\/p>\n

The Climate Change Authority is monitoring the threats closely. Just last week, we published a report on the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef.<\/a> Grim as it is \u2013 unless the world slashes carbon emissions \u2013 the work relied on data from NOAA\u2019s Coral Reef Watch, another service in doubt. Our Bureau of Meteorology tracks Coral Sea temperature changes, but not to NOAA\u2019s standard.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

The authority welcomes efforts by Australia\u2019s science agencies, universities and government departments to assess where our most pressing vulnerabilities lie.<\/p>\n

The US has put us on notice, even if our worst fears aren\u2019t realised. For insurance, we must invest more in our domestic capabilities and forge new partnerships abroad, not least because the challenges \u2013 from carbon emissions cuts to climate adaptation \u2013 are going to intensify.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth recalling that collaboration on weather forecasting persisted through the Cold War because of the clear global good. The World Meteorological Organisation marked 75 years in March, as one example, and international teamwork will be a central theme of this year\u2019s global climate change summit in Brazil.<\/p>\n

In an era when climate change is driving ever wilder weather, we\u2019re going to need more such co-operation \u2013 no matter the whims of the White House.<\/p>\n

Matt Kean is chair of the Climate Change Authority. He previously served as NSW\u2019s Liberal treasurer.<\/p>\n

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among those systems at risk is the Argo float program, a swarm of drifting devices that measures the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-42434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}