(WASHINGTON) — Firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will have reverberating impacts on how meteorologists across the country forecast the weather, according to experts.
Last week, many NOAA employees took to social media to announce that they had been terminated after weeks of uncertainty as the Trump administration continues to make cuts at federal agencies. But the widespread firings of meteorologists who make safety determinations based on upcoming weather and climate conditions could be detrimental to the government’s ability to protect Americans in times of disaster, experts told ABC News.
NOAA and the National Weather Service (NWS), which is a part of NOAA, are responsible for both routine and extreme weather forecasting nationwide – tracking hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, tsunamis and other potentially life-threatening events. The union representing staffers at NOAA and the NWS told ABC News in an emailed statement that 586 probationary employees were terminated from NOAA on Feb. 27, with 108 of those cuts coming from the NWS.
The National Weather Service was already short-staffed ahead of the cuts, with more than 600 vacancies at the start of 2025, National Weather Service Employees Organization General Counsel Richard Hirn said in the statement. In addition, 500 employees, including 172 NWS employees, accepted a deferred resignation and began their administrative leave the next day.
“Which means that hundreds of operational personnel who usually staff the 122 NWS forecast offices, 13 River Forecast Centers, and two tsunami warning centers will disappear overnight,” Hirn told ABC News.
It’s unclear whether there will be sufficient staffing left at any number of regional forecast offices to continue 24/7 operations, Hirn said, adding that “there are only a dozen or so forecasters assigned to each office when fully staffed.”
The NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory announced on Feb. 27 that the office’s communication services would “be taking an indefinite hiatus” due to a reduction in staff.
In addition, the loss of satellite operators at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland, and the Wallops Island Command and Data Acquisition Station in Wallops Island, Virginia, could impact the ability of the NWS to track and maintain the weather data used to forecast and provide severe weather warnings, Hirn said.
Many essential functions, such as satellite information, weather and its effect on airplane engine health, come from these offices, said Craig McLean, former NOAA director of research, during a news conference last Friday.
“Leaving NOAA understaffed will inevitably lead to additional chaos and confusion beyond what we’ve had over the last several weeks and is going to be a negative impact on people’s lives,” McClean said.
The cuts will lead to significant consequences for weather forecasting accuracy, sea navigation, the fishing industry and air safety, Democrats and former NOAA leadership officials said in a news conference the Friday after last week’s dismissals. Officials also expect an early termination of leases on a portion of the 620 facilities run by NOAA across the country.
“All of NOAA’s mission responsibilities have been impacted – every office in NOAA,” Rick Spinrad, former NOAA administrator, said during the news conference. “Every office in NOAA was hit by these indiscriminate, misguided, ill-informed terminations.”
The terminations come as the U.S. heads into tornado season, with hurricane season not too far behind, Spinrad said. Seasonal outlooks will be impacted in addition to the immediate weather forecasting products, Spinrad added.
“Musk and his fake officials, the DOGE tech bros, have been rummaging through our most sensitive data without authority in violation of the law for weeks now,” House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said in a statement. “And this has come with sweeping, indiscriminate layoffs of nonpartisan public servants. Park rangers, firefighters, scientists – all of these people, whose purpose is to serve everyday Americans, have had the rug pulled out from under them. And we will all be worse off for it.”
Among the fired scientists were a researcher at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey; a NWS meteorologist in Anchorage, Alaska; a physical scientist with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction; and the meteorologist in charge at the NWS Louisville office, according to posts to social media.
Hirn said the union was aware of up to an additional 800 probationary NOAA employees could soon be terminated following the initial dismissals. Those additional cuts do not yet appear to have happened.
In a statement to ABC News, NOAA and the NWS declined to comment on or confirm the staffing cuts, saying that the agency does not comment on personnel matters, but NOAA National Press Officer for Weather Susan Buchanan emphasized the agency’s ongoing commitment to meteorology.
“NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” Buchanan said. “We continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings pursuant to our public safety mission.”
On Monday, demonstrators gathered outside of NOAA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to protest the employee dismissals.
“NOAA workers across the country are really kind of tense and waiting to hear what may happen,” Sarah Cooley, former head of NOAA’s ocean acidification program, told ABC News during the protest.
Tom Di Liberto, an ousted public affairs specialist and climate scientist with NOAA, told ABC News that his job before he was dismissed was to help communicate to the public exactly what NOAA does.
“If you ever wondered what the weather was like outside, if you’ve ever been to the ocean, you’re interacting with NOAA,” Di Liberto said. “If you ever looked at temperature on your phone, that’s probably NOAA data coming to you. Every aspect of everything we do outside is related to what NOAA does, which is why this is such a dangerous thing. You’re playing games with potentially lifesaving information to go out to people, or making that harder to get out the people.”
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Cheyenne Haslett, Daniel Manzo, Daniel Peck and Ginger Zee contributed to this report.
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