Why the government won’t let you see its best tool for forecasting hurricanes

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for four years has used a hurricane forecasting tool that often surpasses all others in its accuracy, but it won’t release its predictions to the public, spurring concerns that it is holding back information that could help people prepare for deadly storms.

The tool, known as the HCCA model, was developed by NOAA as part of a program to reduce errors in hurricane forecasts. Statistics published by NOAA’s National Hurricane Center show that from 2020 to 2023, HCCA was one of the two best models for forecasting a storm’s track and intensity. In 2022, HCCA provided the most accurate track forecasts for all lead times out to four days, even beating the Hurricane Center’s official forecast.

The HCCA model produced superior two-day and three-day track forecasts to the Hurricane Center during Ian, the devastating Category 4 hurricane that struck Florida in late September 2022. That hurricane was particularly hard to predict, and better track forecasts could have improved evacuation decisions and saved lives.

But because of agreements with a vendor, NOAA has refused to release the model’s results to the public. With a massive storm headed toward a U.S. landfall this week, critics of the agreement argue taxpayer-funded forecasts should be freely and openly available. They say the model’s forecast could be highlighted in television and online graphics as one of the more reliable scenarios given its track record.

“The HCCA is the gold standard in modern consensus modeling, and if it were available, we would show it,” Bryan Norcross, Fox Weather hurricane specialist, said in an email.

The HCCA, or Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) Corrected Consensus Approach model, is one of more than 25 models used by the National Hurricane Center and is often referenced in its forecast discussions. It uses a proprietary technique, obtained from the private weather risk firm now known as RenaissanceRe Risk Sciences, to blend forecasts from other hurricane forecast models.

“HCCA combines input from a number of models in a way that is weighted by their past performance,” Mark DeMaria, senior research scientist at Colorado State University and co-author of a research article describing the model, said in an email. “That allows biases from individual models to cancel each other and provide a more accurate forecast.”

The agreement signed in 2020 by NOAA and the company enabled the agency to collaborate with the firm but does not allow the government to provide compensation. It states HCCA forecasts are “trade secrets and confidential information” that “shall not be publicly disclosed or disseminated” for a period of five years from the effective date of the agreement. The terms of the agreement were released to The Washington Post in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Some worry the model’s inaccessibility sets a bad precedent for future partnerships between the government and private industry if it keeps potentially lifesaving information from the public.

Maureen O’Leary, a National Weather Service spokesperson, said the agency strives for unrestricted public access to data and models but that “we must honor legal agreements made.”

She added that NOAA is “constantly evaluating new opportunities to improve our products and services and seeks to find the appropriate balance to share that information publicly.”

A company spokesperson for RenaissanceRe said in an email that its collaboration with NOAA is “one of [its] many public-private partnerships … which encourages risk knowledge sharing so communities around the world can better protect themselves.”

Some private weather providers, however, have voiced concerns about the lack of access to the model’s forecasts.

“This HCCA model … was developed at NOAA obviously using taxpayer resources,” Jonathan Porter, senior vice president at the forecasting services company AccuWeather, said in an interview. “This is an urgent public safety issue. It’s about ensuring … that we all have access to the same critical data as the Hurricane Center to effectively understand and communicate risks to people in harm’s way.”

Baron Weather, a longtime provider of weather content to broadcast media, also supports wider access to the model.

“It would certainly be a welcome addition for all broadcast meteorologists and assist them in communicating tropical forecast information and hazards to their viewers,” Bob Dreisewerd, the company’s chief executive, said in an email to The Post.

NOAA plans to start making HCCA forecasts publicly available after its five-year agreement with RenaissanceRe, previously known as WeatherPredict Consulting, expires in March. “It is our intent to publicly release real-time HCCA model output and the source code before the start of the 2025 hurricane season,” O’Leary said in an email.

Porter said AccuWeather is “delighted that NOAA … will make HCCA forecast guidance available to meteorologists across the country so that they can better understand the rationale behind the National Hurricane Center’s forecast and warnings.”

But, he argues, restricted access to the model during this and previous hurricane seasons has been “a major setback” that “goes against the basic principles of … free and open distribution of government-based data.”

“It’s setting a very precarious precedent … threatening to unravel and reverse over 50 years of progress that’s been achieved through the cooperation of the government, academic and private sectors,” Porter said. It “raises the question of what won’t be distributed next.”

U.S. weather forecasting has long been a collaborative endeavor. Historically, NOAA and its international government partners have provided the foundational sensors and systems for making forecasts while the private sector helps to widely disseminate predictions and creates specialized products and services. The 2003 National Academies’ “Fair Weather” report helped define the roles of the U.S. government, private sector and academia at a time of growing friction between the sectors due to their increasingly overlapping roles.

The report noted “the government’s obligation to make its information as widely available as possible to those who paid for it - the taxpayers,” but also recognized the challenges of government-industry partnerships and the desire for policy “that permits commercial objectives to be achieved.”

The lines between the U.S. weather sectors have become even more blurred in recent years as the private sector has built up capabilities that were once exclusively undertaken by governments. NOAA now buys commercial satellite, aircraft and ground data and is collaborating with private companies that have recently built powerful AI weather models.

“The weather enterprise has become a lot more complicated in the past decade, with more observations and modeling being done by private-sector entities,” Keith Seitter, executive director emeritus at the American Meteorological Society, said in an email. “This has challenged the historical approach having all the data being openly and freely distributed … because the private-sector producers often need to protect their intellectual property as part of their business model.”

Seitter and Mary Glackin, former deputy undersecretary for operations at NOAA, are among those leading an American Meteorological Society study looking at the state of the weather enterprise two decades after the “Fair Weather” report. Glackin, now chair of the National Academies’ Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, said policy around commercial weather data and technology acquisition presents a growing challenge.

“Plans must be a balance of public good and costs while also considering maintaining a vibrant U.S. private sector,” Glackin said in an email. “I suspect each opportunity will need to be weighed independently - at least until we have more experience.”

New policy guidance published in July by NOAA addresses the challenge of balancing public and commercial interests, stating that its “programs and offices should seek to maximize the public benefit derived from environmental data and data products obtained through commercial solutions by negotiating the least restrictive terms of use possible.”

Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official and a senior fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy, said the confidentiality requirements that come along with NOAA’s commercial partnerships can sometimes be too broad, at the expense of transparency that is designed to instill trust in its work.

That is especially concerning when it comes to weather forecasts that are meant to serve public health and safety, Rosenberg added. “I do think it’s problematic,” he said. “That isn’t really the way you want to serve the public interest.”