Evaluation of NOAA’s September 6, 2019, Statement About Hurricane Dorian Forecasts

On Friday, September 6, 2019—the day Hurricane Dorian made landfall in the United States as a Category 1 hurricane—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an unsigned statement (Statement) in response to a request by the White House then-acting Chief of Staff to the Office of the Secretary. The Statement rebuked the NOAA National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) Birmingham, Alabama, office (NWS Birmingham) for a September 1, 2019, tweet that advised that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from #Dorian” after the White House then-acting Chief of Staff requested a “correction or an explanation or both” of this NWS Birmingham tweet. This raised the possibility of political interference in the Department’s and NOAA’s handling of events that began on September 1, 2019. <!--break--> There was significant internal and public backlash against the Statement, resulting in multiple complaints to OIG from the public as well as Congressional inquiries. Among the complaints was that the Statement violated NOAA’s Scientific Integrity Policy; NOAA has since conducted an inquiry to determine whether its Scientific Integrity Policy had been violated. <!--break--> This report presents our findings as a detailed chronology and analysis of (a) the events leading up to the Statement, (b) the issuance of the Statement, and (c) the aftermath of the Statement. Our objective was to examine the circumstances surrounding the Statement, providing an independent account of the events that transpired in the interest of transparency and good government. Our conclusions, in brief, are the following: (I) the Department led a flawed process that discounted NOAA participation; (II) the Department required NOAA to issue a Statement that did not further NOAA’s or NWS’s interests; (III) the Department failed to account for the public safety intent of the NWS Birmingham tweet and the distinction between physical science and social science messaging; and (IV) one NOAA employee deleted relevant text messages, and the Department’s federal records guidance is outdated.