Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross threatened to fire top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if they did not crack down on forecasters who contradicted President Trump’s forecast that Hurricane Dorian could affect Alabama.
Acting NOAA Director Neil Jacobs received instructions from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who phoned him from Greece, to take action on Friday. After Jacobs rejected the demand, Ross, whose department oversees NOAA, warned political staff would be fired if they did not negate the contradiction, according to the New York Times.
Later that day, NOAA released an unsigned statement rebuking the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service for a tweet it sent about Dorian that appeared to be in response to the president. “The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time,” an unnamed NOAA representative said. NOAA is the parent agency of NWS.
The report has already led to calls among Democrats for Ross to resign.
Wilbur Ross must resign.
His direct attacks on the scientists and federal employees, whom he threatened to fire for doing their jobs by accurately reporting the weather, are an embarrassing new low for a member of this Cabinet which has been historically venal and incompetent. https://t.co/G53f0nw0EY
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) September 9, 2019
The Commerce Department denied Ross threatened firings due to the controversy. “The New York Times story is false. Secretary Ross did not threaten to fire any NOAA staff over forecasting and public statements about Hurricane Dorian,” a department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
The inspector general of the Commerce Department is now investigating NOAA’s statement on Friday and is asking agency officials to preserve files.
Trump tweeted on Sept. 1 that Alabama and other southeastern states “will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Twenty minutes later, the National Weather Service station in Birmingham tweeted “Alabama will NOT see any impacts” from Dorian because it was projected by that time to remain too far east.
Earlier forecasts considered Alabama to be in its projected path, but a National Hurricane Center graphic shows the odds of low-end tropical storm-force winds associated with Dorian striking Alabama dropping significantly by Sunday to roughly 5%.
Outrage in the forecasting world skyrocketed last week as Trump repeatedly lashed out at the negative media coverage he received for his outdated forecast. The backlash intensified on Wednesday when Trump presented in the Oval Office a National Hurricane Center map of Dorian’s projected path from Aug. 29 and people noticed that added to the graphic was a black semicircle next to the forecast cone that reached over the Florida panhandle and over a part of Alabama.
After NOAA issued an internal memo instructing staff not to contradict Trump about his Dorian forecast, NWS Director Louis Uccellini praised the station in Birmingham. “They were correct in clarifying that the threat was very low,” he said at a conference in Huntsville, Alabama, on Monday. Birmingham office staffers were asked to stand up, and they received a standing ovation from hundreds of their forecasting colleagues.
With concerns rising about the president’s influence over NOAA, an email to staff on Sunday announced the agency’s chief scientist is investigating possible policy and ethics violations. In his message, Craig McLean said NOAA’s news release was “political” and a “danger to public health and safety.”
