Is Climate Data at Risk From Natural Disasters?

Damage from Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina, which knocked a major environmental data center in the city offline. Photo: Bill McMannis via Flickr Creative Commons (CC by 2.0).

Reporter’s Toolbox: Is Climate Data at Risk From Natural Disasters?

By Joseph A. Davis

It’s a sober moment for environmental data geeks. The flooding from climate-intensified Hurricane Helene in late September knocked offline the nation’s largest repository of climate data, based in flood-ravaged Asheville, N.C. It makes you think.

The National Centers for Environmental Information, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, holds and publishes a huge amount of climate and weather data.

 

Among NCEI’s treasures is a

complete record of historical

temperatures all over the world.

 

Among its treasures is a complete record of historical temperatures all over the world. It’s what scientists use to discern historical and current climate heating trends. You can get some idea of further NCEI data on its products page.

Apparently, none of the actual data was lost. But loss of utilities and concern for personnel resulted in much of the NCEI website going offline for days. You can find out more about the outage in reporting from Axios and The New York Times (may require subscription).

The incident raises questions about the physical safety of all environmental data. There’s a lot of it, in a lot of places, under a lot of agencies and institutions.

 

What’s at risk?

Here are some of the concerns about the risks to our stories of environmental data:

Much of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s data, for instance, resides in the agency’s National Computer Center on the campus of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The data pertains to many aspects of environmental pollution, regulation and science. What if a tornado hit it?

Here’s another: Some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world run climate models at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. While NCAR is in Boulder, Colorado (subject to wildfires and floods), its latest, biggest and baddest supercomputer, affectionately named Derecho, is in Cheyenne, Wyoming. What if a lightning storm hit it?

The National Hurricane Center’s main office, meanwhile, is in Miami, Florida. It has lots of great computers and data to keep the United States and other countries safe. Its building there is built like a brick outhouse. But what if the next Hurricane Milton hit it?

The U.S. Geological Survey is yet another important science agency. It makes those maps you take hiking. It also has a huge trove of streamflow and water data, which helps if you want to understand floods. But recently one of its main data servers, called THREDDS, “was retired due to a lack of resources to remedy a security vulnerability.” What if hackers attacked USGS?

 

Importance of data continuity, quality

Like with USGS, it’s not only natural disasters to keep an eye out for, of course.

Remember that as the first Trump administration approached in 2016, a group of researchers and (ex-)government officials worried that Donald Trump would erase all climate information from the internet.

The group formed the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative to preserve the EPA’s online climate information. They did archive most of it, but (spoiler) he erased a lot.

 

One reason it’s important to protect

the integrity of environmental databases:

Continuity of data time series is crucial

for a clear description of environmental trends.

 

That points to one reason it’s important to protect the integrity of environmental databases: Continuity of data time series is crucial for a clear description of environmental trends.

Another is that politicians opposing environmental protection have for many years used “data quality” as a pretext for undermining environmental laws and regulations,

So while we don’t know if Trump will be elected, we do know there will be more disasters. And each potentially puts our data at risk.

[Editor’s Note: Read more on hurricanes and disasters in our Topics on the Beat pages, where you’ll find top SEJournal stories, plus EJToday headlines.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 37. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.