Mass job cuts hit NOAA, agency that oversees hurricane center and weather service
More than 880 probationary employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – which forecasts the nation’s weather and protects ocean species – began falling victim to the federal firings on Thursday.
“The hammer came down," said Craig McLean, a former chief scientist and former assistant administrator for research at NOAA.
Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, confirmed that about 880 employees were being terminated, about 7% of the agency's 12,000 staff members.
Employees of the agency – which monitors violent weather and tracks hurricanes – had waited on pins and needles for days as tens of thousands of their federal colleagues who had been hired or promoted within the last year, or in some cases two years, were terminated from other agencies.
Like the others, NOAA officials were told to fire “everyone on probationary status,” said Andrew Rosenberg, a marine scientist who is co-editor of the SciLight newsletter on Substack, and a former deputy director of NOAA's Fisheries Service. Estimates of those considered probationary either because of their hire dates or promotion dates had ranged as high as 1,300.
The terminations were ordered as part of the ongoing effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to slash the size of the federal bureaucracy and budget.
The agency was mum on the planned changes. Spokesman Scott Smullen told Paste BN this week that “per long standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.”
“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,” Smullen said.
NOAA has sweeping responsibilities for safeguarding lives through monitoring and forecasting the nation’s most violent storms, daily weather and long-term climate. Its agencies and employees have broad scientific duties that include collecting, storing and sharing data, maintaining a research fleet of satellites, ships and aircraft, as well as managing the nation’s ocean and marine species and saltwater fishing.
Among the agencies that employ its more than 6,700 engineers and scientists, are the National Weather Service, Storm Prediction Center and National Marine Fisheries Service.
NOAA executives have been told the next wave, a reduction in work force ordered by the Administration, should include more than 1,000 additional employees, Rosenberg said.
Protests mount over NOAA firings
A flood of dozens of former NOAA officials and hundreds of nonprofits and businesses across the nation urged Congress this week to protect the agency and its vital services from the widespread job cuts throughout the federal workforce. One group of former officials stood outside NOAA offices this week, waving signs of support for the employees.
Cantwell, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, sent a letter this week stating that without NOAA’s workforce, “communities will not be prepared for the next big Nor'easter, hurricane, wildfire, or drought.”
“Ships will not be able to safely navigate through our waterways,” she wrote. “Farmers will not have the data they need to manage their crops.”
Cantwell was one of the no votes on last week’s 51 - 45 vote in favor of the confirmation of Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce, the department that oversees NOAA.
The coalition of nonprofits and others stated they are “gravely concerned about continued threats to the agency, including staff layoffs and intimidation, deep budget cuts, research censorship, and other actions that jeopardize its critical mission and services.”
“If not stopped, further action by the administration to interfere with NOAA’s critical services and mission could endanger our economy, health, public safety, and national security,” the letter stated. “The agency’s work is especially crucial as extreme weather events become more frequent and severe.”
Outside meteorologists and weather researchers also added their voices to the opposition to the workforce reductions at the agencies, including the National Hurricane Center. They noted a preliminary summary of the 2024 hurricane season released by the center this week reported its forecasts for storm tracks last year was the best and most consistent in its history.
Climate "alarm"
The volumes of data NOAA collects on the warming climate and its impact on the intensity of rainfall in storms, rising sea levels and other scientific evidence have made it a target of the conservative voices backing reductions to the federal bureaucracy.
NOAA and the weather service were the subject of recommendations in the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” published last year, also known as Project 2025. Many of the group’s recommendations already have found their way into the president’s executive orders and actions by the Department of Government Efficiency.
NOAA should be "dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories," the document continued. “NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality."
The document accused NOAA of forming a "colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry." It stated the agency's data collection should be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”
Both McLean and Rosenberg said its well-established that the climate is changing. “Everybody looking at natural systems has to think about how the natural environment is changing," Rosenberg said. "It’s not theoretical, it’s documented.”
The agency's more than a century's worth of weather measurements are the reason the nation has documented evidence of the changing climate, in terms of more extended droughts, more extreme rainfall such as the recent historic flooding in Kentucky and warming nighttime temperatures in many locations. The Weather Service and NOAA's National Geodetic Survey are among the federal government’s oldest agencies, established more than 150 years ago.
“The law requires (NOAA) to make scientific measurements of high precision, to analyze those measurements of the atmosphere and the ocean and make scientifically sound conclusions of what the science is seeing," then report that to the public, McLean said. “It’s important to industries, to coastal communities, to agriculture to reinsurers and banks. The futures market is heavily based on NOAA’s climate forecasts and seasonal forecasts.”
DOGE representatives visited the NOAA offices earlier in February and gained access to email systems, cloud storage and websites, and the agency was among those directed to eliminate all references to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Rosenberg said. They also demanded a list of grants and were searching those grants “with key words to determine which might be, in their view, contrary to the president’s executive orders,” he said.
Rick Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator who served from 2021-2025, defended the agency in an essay on his LinkedIn page.
The federal budget could be reduced by $7 billion, Spinrad wrote "if we are willing to kill a few thousand Americans every year, put our economy further into debt, and guarantee the loss of real property around the country.”
That’s what “will” happen if NOAA is defunded or if the reduction in force incapacitates the agency, he said. “The predicted impact to lives, livelihoods, and property isn’t hyperbolic.”
Dinah Voyles Pulver covers climate change and the environment for Paste BN. She's written about hurricanes, tornadoes and violent weather for more than 30 years. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X.