Scientists warn that the Trump administration’s abrupt firing of hundreds of weather forecasters and climate experts across NOAA will curtail important climate research and could result in preventable deaths during extreme weather events and related disasters.
Over 800 employees across most divisions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — a premier U.S. federal agency at the forefront of climate research that provides timely weather forecasts to the public for free — were dismissed in mass layoffs that began Thursday afternoon (Feb. 27). The cuts targeted probationary employees, a term that refers to new hires in trial periods lasting one to two years as well as long-term federal workers who recently transitioned into new positions; with limited civil protections, these employees are easier to terminate. The layoffs are part of a broader effort by the new White House administration to shrink the federal workforce, which is being spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at its helm.
“Decimating the nation’s core scientific enterprise, even as costly and deadly climate change impacts and extreme weather events worsen, flies in the face of logic, common sense and fiscal responsibility,” Juan Declet-Barreto of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit organization started by scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. “NOAA’s data and science are used routinely by weather forecasters, mariners, farmers, emergency responders, businesses and everyday people across the country.”
“Everyone in the United States relies on NOAA in their daily lives whether they realize it or not, something that will come into focus for many in the weeks and months ahead,” he added.
Among those dismissed from NOAA include meteorologists at the National Weather Service (NWS) who provide local forecasts, a move that several scientists are warning will hamper predicting and communicating timely warnings of severe storms and earthquakes —warnings that people and industries across the country rely on. This could ultimately leave the U.S. less prepared than it would have been for the increasingly extreme weather patterns driven by climate change.
“There will be people who die in extreme weather events & related disasters who would not have otherwise,” climate scientist Daniel Swain at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote in a post on X. The layoffs at NOAA “are spectacularly short-sighted, and ultimately will deal a major self-inflicted wound to the public safety of Americans and the resiliency of the American economy to weather and climate-related disasters.”
NOAA headquarters did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Space.com.
By late Thursday, NWS and NOAA offices had started reducing services citing staffing shortages. NWS headquarters announced weather balloon launches at Kotzebue, Alaska — which typically lift off twice a day to collect raw data used to refine weather prediction models — have been suspended indefinitely. A field station in Michigan that conducted research in the Great Lakes region announced its social media presence will be taking an indefinite hiatus.
“You’re seeing the whittling away of scientists, and the people who got fired today are some of the best people you can imagine,” Tom DiLiberto, a NOAA climate and weather scientist until Thursday, when he was fired two weeks before his probationary period ended, told CBS News.
“These people have dedicated their lives to help others — there’s no politics in this,” he added. “When we forecast, or think of the oceans and keep them clean, we’re not thinking about the politics. This is an insult on science and all that’s good.”
Like many actions ordered by the Trump administration in recent weeks, the layoffs at NOAA follow the vision of Project 2025. Project 2025 is a policy blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization, that calls NOAA “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” and urges the agency to be dismantled, some of its programs terminated, and data collected by the NWS to be commercialized.
The Union of Concerned Scientists said it had delivered a letter signed by 2,500 scientific experts calling on Howard Lutnick, who leads the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA, to protect NOAA’s staff, funding and scientific independence.
“Censoring science does not change the facts about climate change,” Declet-Barreto said in the UCS statement.
Across the nation, several scientists are planning to protest outside NOAA facilities early next week and in rallies on Friday (March 7), which are being organized by a team of early-career researchers to “Stand Up for Science.”
“We will not go quietly because we care about the NOAA mission to protect the public,” a NOAA scientist who was part of the mass layoffs at NOAA wrote on social media.
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