The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employs approximately 12 000 people around the world, more than half of whom are scientists and engineers. NOAA Operates 18 satellites and 15 vessels and has a budget of 6,8 billion dollars. Through various services, its job is to study the atmosphere (National Weather Service), study the oceans, fish resources, charting the seas (National Ocean Service), to follow their evolution and predict their future (Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research). NOAA's work is critical for aviation, Navy, fishing, climate research and offshore oil and gas exploration, especially when it comes to modelling weather patterns and climate change.
The U.S. government has begun to attack NOAA with a massive layoff operation. Meteorologists, experts in climate modelling, glacier scientists, research vessel crew members, mostly staff on probation at NOAA, received dismissal emails on February, Thursday 27 with immediate effect.
The dismissals follow a joint note from the Office of Management and Budget (DOGE) and the Office of Personnel Management, dated 26 February, which called on agencies to "focus on eliminating as much as possible functions that are not mandated by law, while ensuring that the functions imposed by law are carried out in the most efficient and high-quality manner possible". CBS News reported that NOAA employees have been told they should prepare for a reduction by half of the workforce and 30 % budgets.
Savings made on NOAA at the end of February 2025 – extract (Source : DOGE)
What for ?
The NOAA stands at the intersection of a wider movement to reduce government, and an ideological fight over climate change.
The Project 2025, Conservative political program produced by the Heritage Foundation (1), specifically calls for climate change to be systematically eliminated from government policy-making. The project 2025 calls for NOAA to be "dismantled and for many of its functions to be eliminated, entrusted to other agencies, privatized or placed under the control of States and territories". He describes NOAA's six main offices as "one of the main drivers of the alarm on climate change and, as such, it is harmful to the future prosperity of the United States ”. As for the National Weather Service, it should "fully commercialize its forecasting operations".
What implications? ?
These workforce reductions could have far-reaching consequences for the U.S. economy and the safety of U.S. citizens, because extreme weather events are affecting increasingly populated areas. Timothy Gallaudet, former NOAA administrator, declared :
NOAA is doing great things that affect every American, every day, in a positive way. With the drastic cuts that some members of the administration want to make to the agency, everything will slow down and could even potentially stop. There’s going to be some interruptions and declines in the quality of service because we’ll have offices that are understaffed.. That’s a big risk for the weather service. Our weather satellites, they’re vital for public safety , and any interruption to their maintenance and operation could be a problem too".
This raises questions about NOAA's ability to continue to provide accurate and up-to-date information on risks such as heatwaves free of charge, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes, information that is essential for sectors such as agriculture, Navy and Air Force, as well as for the information of the general public. Furthermore, NOAA manages the fishery, large protected ocean areas and monitoring space weather that can disrupt communication technologies and the electric network.
Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, at a press conference on Friday 28 February, said that about 650 employees had been summarily dismissed on Thursday 27. He warned that the layoffs could affect the quality of hurricane forecasts in the coming months.
"NOAA’s improved capability for predictions of hurricanes is the data that NOAA collects from the hurricane hunters and from the observations at sea. Those data will probably be compromised right now because of the cuts that have been made to NOAA's Office of Marine and Air Operations " he said. "Because of these reductions, it’s not clear whether the airplanes will be able to fly and the ships will be able to go to sea, and certainly not at the same kind of operational tempo as they have before. That means data won’t be as abundant, and so the quality of the forecast is likely to go down to some degree. Every office in NOAA was hit by these indiscriminate, misguided, ill-informed terminations ”.
He said warning of further consequences that will have economic repercussions on the entire country.
Going back ?
It is not impossible that, in the near future, NOAA's weather and ocean forecasts that we use as GRIB files are no longer freely available. At the very least, we can fear a serious degradation in their reliability.
It is fortunate that we have high-quality weather and ocean forecasting services in Europe, with their own infrastructures — supercomputers, satellites, data stations around the world — and top scientists, which guarantee us complete independence in this field.
Bad weather for America !
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Source, freely translated and compiled :
Vox – Umair Irfan
Inside climate News
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https://www.slate.fr/monde/donald-trump-menace-baleines-rice-golfe-mexique-navires-protection-animaux-marins-cetaces-disparition-agence-noaa-administration-etats-unis
Make no mistake about it, NOAA is far from alone. The current U.S. government is on an anti-science offensive, that they are "soft" (sociology, history, Humanities), or hard (physics, Biology and health, Climate Science, geophysics). This is not a simple "privatization", as I have been able to read, but a modern obscurantism.
An example: NOAA has had to cancel all its monitoring programs for whale population migrations, orcas etc at the maritime border with Canada, and no longer share scientific data with the corresponding body of the same type, in Canada with whom they had been working for years
Thank you for this article. It is possible that nothing is simply happening, Because the dismissed technicians and engineers will be immediately hired by private companies created for the occasion, who will charge the same service as before to what remains of NOAA. The money will just go into other bank accounts. And the American taxpayer will continue to pay the same amount. It would be likely that these private companies would invest part of their cash in the virtual currency TRUMP.
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