The Keystone State may lie far from the planet's polar regions, but Leigh Stearns knows their fates intertwine.
The University of Pennsylvania professor studies the delicate balance among climate change, melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, and how they affect people and places far from the North and South poles.
"Pennsylvania is already projected to continue to get warmer and wetter," Stearns said.
Now 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 100 years ago, Pennsylvania projects to warm another 6 degrees by 2050, she said.
Understanding and predicting how the changes will affect people nationwide only makes the work of the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration more vital, Stearns said.
That's why potential federal cuts have Stearns and many others fearful.
"We're really fortunate that we have had such a strong National Weather Service and NOAA," she said. "The lives they've saved by having accurate forecasts cannot be underestimated."
As National Public Radio explained in a recent story, NOAA monitors and forecasts weather and hurricanes, manages oceanic fisheries, protects coastal resources and creates and updates maritime maps critical to global shipping. TV meteorologists rely on NOAA data for local forecasting, as do weather reports many Americans read on their phones.
NOAA's most widely known offices include the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.
The view from NEPA
Mike Javer starts every day by checking National Weather Service and NOAA models.
He calls himself a hobbyist, but owns the PA Weather Academy Facebook page and helps run another, NEPA Storm Chasers.
On both, he shares forecasts he crafts from data he gleans from the weather service and NOAA.
"Most of the data that is used by meteorologists today - including myself, and including the NEPA storm chasers team - uses data from NOAA," Javer said.
Javer, who is studying meteorology at Penn State, said the quality of that data could be in jeopardy due to budget and staffing cuts.
Denys Kruhlo, another meteorology student and owner of the PA Weather Plus LLC Facebook page, spoke about the impending NOAA and NWS cuts in February post with approximately 89,000 followers.
"I don't think a lot of people know that... everywhere they get their weather information from, that data is coming from NOAA," he said. "This includes all of the weather alerts, important model data, a lot of life saving information that's out there."
Javer and Kruhlo are both seniors. Kruhlo has lined up a job at a private company, but Javer said he always aspired to work at the National Weather Service.
That doesn't look like a possibility because he's been told hiring is frozen.
"This is actually going to make me take a little bit of a turn that I really did not want to do," he said. "It's pretty infuriating being just a couple months out from graduation...that I have to turn to different options."
'This is concerning'
Rob Lydick, a Penn State meteorology professor, serves as executive producer of Weather World, a weather and climate show that provides in-depth statewide forecasts.
“I would say, on average, probably better than 80% of the information that we look at day to day when it comes to getting in touch with the weather and then making a forecast about what's to come over the short, medium or long range comes from NOAA and the National Weather Service," Lydick said.
Lydick said the weather service recently reduced the frequency of some weather balloon launches across the country because of material and labor shortages.
Many meteorologists rely on that data, including AccuWeather in State College.
"We have no indication at this time that the changes at NOAA will impact the accuracy of AccuWeather’s forecasts and warnings," said Steven Smith, AccuWeather's chief executive officer in an emailed statement. "We remain committed to providing the highest levels of service to the public, the media, and our clients. We will continue to monitor and assess the situation."
Khrulo has noticed the lack of weather balloon data when compiling forecasts.
"I feel like we've seen some performance loss in some of the American models the past few weeks," he said "I've been noticing it hasn't been performing as well as it probably should have, just because we're losing some of that crucial data."
Lydick, with Weather World, said some data gaps can be filled by other methods, like satellite data.
“But it's one of those things where if this is only the beginning, and especially when it comes to maintaining other pieces of equipment or other technologies … this is concerning," Lydick said.
Many fired probationary employees could get their jobs back because of an ongoing legal challenge. But Lydick said he’s heard from graduates working at the weather service that more job cuts could be coming.
If that happens, Lydick worries data informing forecasts could become less reliable and affect extreme weather warnings.
Widespread impacts expected
Extreme weather is only expected to increase, including here in Pennsylvania, Stearns said.
"It means there are going to be a whole lot more days above 90 degrees," she said. "And then for precipitation, it's supposed to get wetter, but in more intense storms."
Northcentral Pennsylvania experienced that last August, when Tropical Storm Debby wreaked havoc across the state, leaving one man dead and causing millions of dollars in damages.
Political leaders gathered in Williamsport earlier this month to talk about flood mitigation efforts. Stearns believes understanding and predicting weather that causes such catastrophes will only become more critical, and NWS and NOAA 's loss of expertise will hamper that.
"We count on them so much ... in terms of what crops are we going to grow? What is the forecast for this summer? How is this hurricane going to develop? What towns might need to evacuate," Stearns said.
"And so without that knowledge — and not even just the current knowledge, but the workforce development of getting new scientists interested in meteorology and interested in working for the federal government and NOAA — we're really losing a lot of capacity in that way," Stearns said.
She also does not believe privatization will effectively replace the federal agencies because many commercial forecasters already rely on NOAA forecast models and data.
"Sure they could hire a few experts to try to do that themselves, but they won't have a whole agency devoted to making it better and putting out the observations to improve their systems and communicating it across like a wide range of civilian and defense agencies," Stearns said.
"I think it's hugely short-sighted to make any cuts to NOAA — especially these very drastic, extreme and fast cuts," Stearns said. "I think it's going to be very harmful.
