As Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters recede from devastated communities in the South, political rhetoric about the storm has accelerated on social media. One viral post claims that Republicans would eliminate one of the federal government’s most important hurricane forecasting functions.
“Good time to remember Project 2025 plans to close the National Hurricane Center,” says one post that has become widespread on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.
The claim is false. Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership does propose sweeping changes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but it does not advocate for eliminating the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
The NHC is a division of the NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) and provides warnings, forecasts, and analysis on dangerous tropical weather. Specialist teams within the NHC include the hurricane specialist unit, which focuses on tracking hazardous weather conditions, the technology and science branch, which develops and integrates new tracking and forecasting technology, and a hurricane liaison team, which coordinates information sharing with federal and local agencies.
In the Mandate for Leadership, the NWS and NHC are addressed in a chapter on the NOAA’s umbrella agency: The U.S. Department of Commerce. Written by Thomas Gilman, a 2019 appointee to the department, the section proposes that many components of the NOAA’s six main offices should be broken up and transferred to other government agencies. “The [NOAA] should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Gilman writes. “That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”
Gilman, however, does not argue that the NWS and NHC should be eliminated. On the contrary, he praises the NHC and emphasizes its importance to public safety. “The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally,” he writes. Gilman emphasizes that data collected by the NHC should be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate,” but proposes no changes to the department otherwise.
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