On Wednesday, President Trump displayed a National Weather Service map in the Oval Office showing Hurricane Dorian’s cone of uncertainty (the probable paths of its center). The map had been crudely altered with a Sharpie to extend the cone into Alabama in an attempt to align the map with the president’s earlier tweet falsely claiming that the hurricane was forecast to hit the state.
Social media commentators and late-night talk show hosts mocked #Sharpiegate as an absurd and brazen falsehood that not only flouted reality but also broke the law.
That last criticism was news to many. Until this week, few Americans knew that a provision in the U.S. Code titled “False weather reports” makes it a crime to falsely claim the authority of government weather science: “Whoever knowingly issues or publishes any counterfeit weather forecast or warning of weather falsely representing such forecast or warning to have been issued or published by the Weather Bureau, United States Signal Service, or other branch of the Government service, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ninety days, or both.”
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As climate change contributes to more rapid intensification of hurricanes, the public will need to rely more than ever on NWS maps and National Hurricane Center advisories to make quick decisions about whether to evacuate ahead of a deadly hurricane. The hundreds of millions of residents living at risk of dangerous weather in the United States need to have full confidence that government weather forecasts and storm warnings are functioning as they are intended: protecting lives and property as a public good.
The president undermined such trust, and while his stunt might be written off as fodder for late-night comics, it’s no joking matter: Falsified forecasts can put lives at risk, something the National Weather Service has been protecting us from for more than a century.
