Meteorologists in Cotzevue, Alaska fired a balloon with weather into the sky twice a day to measure data such as wind speed, humidity, and temperature, and translated the information the balloon sent back to the weather forecast and models. This is a ritual that is repeated at dozens of weather stations around the United States.
Thursday morning, the National Weather Service, which has struggled for years with a shortage of workers across the country, announcement Due to a shortage of personnel, Kotzebue’s launch was “indefinitely suspended.”
A few hours later, the massive layoffs began to spread through the Meteorological Bureau and its parent agency, the National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration. Over 800 people were expected to lose their jobs. This is the latest cut in the Trump administration’s drastic efforts to rebuild the federal workforce. As they have elsewhere, the cut appeared to focus on probation employees who are easily dismissed.
Not at all unexpected, but the cancellation was shocking to the weather services staff. This is the government agency responsible for issuing warnings, generating daily forecasts, advising local governments, and collecting weather data that enables these functions. The news sparked rapid condemnation from people on the ground, some lawmakers and the public.
Kayla Besong, a scientist at Hawaii’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, part of the Meteorological Bureau, said she wanted her position as a “essential” employee.
However, on Thursday, Dr. Benong, who started her role in September, received a notice of fire. She said the boss at the warning center, which monitors earthquakes and marine data around the clock to prepare for the possibility of a tsunami, appears to have not received advance notice. “I was waiting for that email to feel like four weeks,” Dr. Benong said.
There are 122 weather services offices across the country that provide local forecasts and issuance warnings about violent storms. It was unclear how many of the roughly 4,000 weather services employees lost their jobs this week.
A weather scientist with the California Meteorological Service said he refused to be identified due to fears of retaliation, causing many tears among the teams on Thursday. The office lost a new meteorologist who had been working for six weeks, and a facility’s electronics technician, three probation employees, an administrative assistant and a new meteorologist.
Blueprints for privatization
Weather services use tools such as satellites, radars and weather balloons to collect land, sea and air observations, and the data is used by researchers and private companies across the country. It’s where many high-tech companies get information about weather apps.
In 2023, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was released Project 2025a 900-page policy blueprint that assumes a largely resolved federal government. Many of the Trump administration’s early actions follow that plan. Regarding NOAA, the plan calls for the agency to be demolished, suggesting that weather services focus on data collection services and “completely commercialize” forecasting operations.
Some critics of Cut said weather service would lead to losses for employees most likely to help them navigate its future. Others raised concerns about public safety.
Louis Uccelini, director of the Weather Bureau between 2013 and 2022, called the termination “cruel” and said many of his latest employees were hired to deal with a serious local staffing shortage. “Weather services are trying to meet important needs with these new recruits,” he said.
Justin Mankin, a geographic scientist and associate professor of geography at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire, called the layoffs a “surprising move” and said the lost expertise is essential to the functioning of the economy.
“This is not a trivial expertise that can be recovered with some well-placed LinkedIn ads,” said Dr. Mankin, who uses NOAA data in his drought variability study and uses what it means for ranchers, farmers and municipalities facing water shortages.
Neil Larow is studying wildfire behavior at the University of Nevada in Reno and has seen many of his students continue to work as meteorologists in weather services. He said many of them could find higher wage jobs in the private sector, but they were attracted to public services.
Dr. Larow said young predictors are essential for institutional relevance as they lack more established colleagues and have technical skills that may be familiar with cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, programming and big data.
“These are people who have that skill set more than anyone else,” he said.
John Tuhei Morales, a longtime television meteorologist in Miami and predictor for the Elephant Bureau, said the shooting raised serious public safety concerns. “I’m telling you, Americans will suffer from all this,” he said. “My life is at risk.”
As a broadcast meteorologist in hurricane-prone regions, Tuhay Morales said he is continually dependent on the entire weather service to do his job. “We can’t do our job without the entire scaffolding provided by NOAA and the National Weather Service,” he added.
Experts who studied some of the country’s most severe weather phenomena feared that staff reductions in weather services would undermine their ability to predict future moments.
Before the layoff notice was issued Thursday morning, Dr. Larow conducted training sessions for dozens of meteorologists by identifying extreme dangers during wildfires. These incident meteorologists are trained to provide specialized forecasts during events such as wildfires. For example, in the recent Los Angeles fire, incident meteorologists have helped maintain information from fire agencies.
Marty Ralph, director of the Western Weather Extreme Center at the University of California, San Diego, said the data is essential for the research his team is doing to improve forecasts for atmospheric rivers that have a major impact on water supply on the West Coast. He is concerned that staff reductions will affect the richness and quality of observations.
“Through our research, we have developed the world’s best cutting-edge regional weather model for predicting atmospheric rivers,” Dr. Ralph said. “We really need the observations that NOAA products have collected in order for us to do these things.”
In a statement Thursday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat of Maryland, said the Trump administration’s cuts in federal workers at NOAA were “completely illegal,” citing a recent ruling by the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent review body that has restored employment for six federal workers fired from various agencies. “We can assure you that we will fight this action in Congress and in court,” he said.
Another Democrat, Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, criticised the end at NOAA in a statement Thursday. “Fires are at stake to risk our ability to predict and respond to extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. The community is causing harm,” she said.
Cantwell was asking Howard Luttonick, the commerce secretary who currently oversees Noah at Luttonick’s confirmation hearing about plans to privatize many of the weather services outlined by Project 2025.
But during the same hearing, in exchange for Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, Lutnick appeared to acknowledge the possibility that the private sector could take on predictions that traditionally were weather service jobs. “I think we can make our products more efficient, more expensive and dramatically less expensive,” he said.
