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Demands for investigation into ‘political interference’ at NOAA

Pressure is increasing on United States commerce secretary Wilbur Ross over allegations that he presided over “manipulation of science” at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Andrew Rosenberg, the director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists nonprofit and a former deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Services at NOAA, called on 10 September for Ross’s resignation and for an investigation into whether the White House had helped “suppress accurate scientific information” over the possible impacts of Hurricane Dorian.

President Donald Trump tweeted on 1 September that Alabama was among US states likely to be hit by Dorian. Twenty minutes later a public advisory Twitter account run by the NOAA National Weather Service office in Alabama tweeted that the state would not see any impacts. Trump repeated his claims, and on 6 September NOAA issued a statement saying that the NWS’s tweet “spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time”.

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