Michael Lowry – Eye on The Tropics – “Only days after the U.S. Department of Defense abruptly announced the immediate termination of satellite data critical to hurricane forecasts – granted a moratorium early Monday through July – NOAA posted details of its 2026 budget request to Congress, which closes more than a dozen world-class weather and climate facilities across the U.S., including Miami’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and its Hurricane Research Division, institutions responsible for most of the advancements in hurricane forecasting and science over the past 50 years. Though budget estimates released by the White House at the end of May outlined draconian cuts to critical NOAA programs, the details released on Monday by NOAA confirm a catastrophic hit for the nation’s hurricane forecasting capabilities if approved by Congress. The calamitous cuts include the elimination of all federally funded meteorological, oceanographic, and climate labs and non-profit cooperative research institutes across America. These world-class centers-of-excellence employ hundreds of the nation’s top weather and climate scientists and deploy key technology to help forecasters accurately predict the world’s most extreme weather. The history of many of the over two dozen labs and institutes slated for closure stretches back 50 to 75 years…”