NOAA backed Trump on his orders
White House pressed weather agency to support claim storm would hit Alabama
Official says president directed his staff to have leaders issue statement on hurricane threat to Alabama.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump directed his staff to order the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to prepare a statement that Hurricane Dorian posed a significant threat to Alabama as of Sept. 1, in contrast to what the agency’s forecasters were predicting at the time.
Trump instructed acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to direct NOAA’s leaders to issue a statement buttressing his contention, according to a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter.
Mulvaney then relayed the message to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, this official said, who in turn instructed NOAA officials to put out a statement Friday to that effect.
Trump told reporters he made no such instructions to Mulvaney on Wednesday afternoon.
Democrats on the House Science Committee are launching an investigation into the Commerce Department’s involvement in NOAA’s unusual decision.
Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., sent a letter to Ross requesting information related to the department’s dealings with NOAA regarding Hurricane Dorian.
The committee, which has jurisdiction over NOAA, is requesting a briefing with Commerce Department staff who may have been involved in issuing instructions to NOAA that led to several directives issued to Weather Service staff and culminated in the Sept. 6 unsigned statement, which disavowed a tweet sent by the agency’s Birmingham Weather Service forecast office on Sept. 1.
That tweet definitively stated that Alabama would not see any impacts from Dorian, and came in response to a flood of phone calls to the office from worried residents.
NWS staff later learned the calls originated from a tweet from Trump that falsely asserted the state “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by the powerful hurricane.
In reality, at the time Trump sent the Sept. 1 tweet, the only hurricane forecast product that was showing potential impacts in Alabama at the time of the president’s tweet was the probability of seeing tropical storm force winds, and even that only showed about a 5% chance of such conditions in a small portion of the state.
The official track forecast at the time of his tweet showed the storm moving up the Southeast coast, away from Alabama.
The NOAA statement on Sept. 6 admonished the Birmingham division for speaking “in absolute terms” when it tweeted Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from #Dorian.”
The NOAA statement resulted in part from pressure that Ross brought to bear on Neil Jacobs, the acting head of NOAA, in an early morning phone call on Friday from Greece, where the secretary was traveling for meetings, according to three individuals familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to speak on a sensitive issue.
“We are deeply disturbed by the politicization of NOAA’s weather forecast activities for the purpose of supporting incorrect statements by the president,” Johnson and Sherrill wrote to Ross.
The House members are seeking answers to who ordered and helped draft the Sept. 6 statement, and whether Commerce Department or White House staff members were involved in threatening NOAA leadership in order to secure the statement.
They noted that based on press reports, it appears Secretary Ross violated the “values of scientific integrity.”
The Science Committee is requesting all records of communication between Commerce Department officials, NOAA and the White House between Sept. 1 and Sept. 9 pertaining to the president’s tweet and NOAA’s Sept. 6 statement.
Meanwhile, a new tropical weather system is brewing, and this one may actually hit Alabama.