The Department of Defense has said it will cancel plans to discontinue a program that makes public satellite data that is crucial for hurricane forecasting and sea ice monitoring.
The decision, confirmed by the department on Tuesday in an email to The New York Times, is the latest about-face in the agency’s plans for the data.
The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, which hosts the data, shocked scientists by announcing in June that it would stop providing the information at the end of that month, citing “significant cybersecurity risk.” A week later, the agency offered a temporary extension, saying that the data would remain available until July 31, which is just before the usual peak of hurricane season.
Now, two days before the latest end-of-month deadline, the agency has decided to keep the program running indefinitely. According to a Navy spokesperson who declined to be identified, it will remain available until the sensors stop working or until the program formally ends in September 2026.
“The center had planned to phase out the data as part of a Defense Department modernization effort,” the spokesperson said. “But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meet modernization goals while keeping the data flowing.”
The Navy declined to specify which government partners had provided feedback, or what concerns they had expressed. NOAA did not respond to a request for comment.
“It’s great news for the forecast community and also, more broadly, the scientific community,” said Michael Lowry, a meteorologist and hurricane specialist in Miami.
Even if the data will go offline eventually, Mr. Lowry said, now forecasters will have time to prepare. “There are a lot of systems that are affected when you just suddenly cut off the data,” he said.
The Department of Defense program in question dates to 1962 and has launched more than a dozen satellites that collect weather data for military use, which NOAA has long made available to the public.
Two primary satellites remain orbiting near Earth’s poles and are equipped with microwave sensors that can penetrate clouds. Unlike other satellite-based tools that forecasters use, this technology can provide a detailed snapshot of the planet’s surface both night and day, and can be used to measure wave height and wind speed and to predict the path of a storm.
That gives forecasters round-the-clock insight into the conditions at the heart of a hurricane, which tend to intensify at night. Catching changes in a storm’s path and intensity as early as possible can save lives by giving people more time to prepare or evacuate their homes.
The two polar satellites, launched in the early 2000s, are nearing the end of their useful lives, and the computer systems that manage the data are increasingly dated. Plans are in place to continue collecting similar data with a modernized satellite fleet.
The first of these upgraded satellites launched in 2024. But it takes time for a new craft to get fully set up, and it has not yet begun providing data with NOAA. Another new satellite is planned for launch in 2026.
“Any gap or lack of data is certainly not good,” said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.
Researchers like Dr. Labe rely on the data from the satellites’ microwave sensors to track long-term changes in polar sea ice. “It’s really been the key data source that we have for monitoring one of the most prominent indicators of climate change, and that’s Arctic sea ice loss,” he said.
If NOAA had stopped providing data before the new satellites were ready, Dr. Labe said, it could have created a blind spot for scientists, who need continuous long-term records for climate models. It would also pose an immediate problem for shipping, transportation and communities in Arctic regions.