Can NOAA weather the storm of budget cuts? Some meteorologists are concerned

Twice a day, until recently, technicians at the National Weather Service (NWS) released balloons into the atmosphere from nearly 100 locations. As these balloons sailed upward, small data collection instruments called radiosondes went with them, capturing the atmospheric data that — along with information from ocean buoys, satellites, and even hurricane-hunting aircraft — feeds the computer models meteorologists around the country use to predict the weather.

Now, following a series of budget and staffing cuts at NWS and its parent agency last spring, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a number of those weather balloons are no longer flying. Suspended launches in areas as disparate as Albany and Kotzebue are just some of the more tangible impacts of these cuts. NOAA’s already barebones workforce was slashed by the hundreds this year, with more layoffs expected in 2026. About 14% of the agency’s 2025 research budget has been frozen, and the 2026 budget, which is expected to be finalized in October 2025, will likely be around 6% less than this year.

The cuts are alarming meteorologists at TV stations, consulting firms, and research institutions around the country. Those who spoke with Scienceline say kneecapping NOAA risks American lives in dangerous heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural disasters. They are worried less data collection and fewer employees to process it will make vital forecasts less accurate.

“It’s already impossible to get it exactly right with the most brilliant people from NOAA helping us. What happens when we start taking people away?” asks Steve MacLaughlin, meteorologist and climate change reporter at NBC6 South Florida. “We don’t know, but we are scared, we are worried.”

Already, this year’s severe storms — such as a deadly tornado outbreak in Missouri and flooding in Texas — have caused some to wonder whether diminishing NOAA played a role in flubbed evacuations and high death tolls. And it’s difficult to overstate just how reliant American meteorologists are on the National Weather Service when it comes to predicting storms like these.

“The whole point of the weather service is it’s free and accessible for everyone,” says Jake Grant, the morning meteorologist for WMDT in Salisbury, Maryland. “All meteorologists, no matter if they’re private sector or public sector broadcasters, every single one of them uses the National Weather Service every single day.”

By the time a hurricane or heat wave hits, weather service meteorologists have already been studying it for days or weeks — and they usually have a pretty good idea of when it will start, how long it will last and its severity. Forecasts for severe weather like this, and for more mundane sunshine and rain, begin the same way: poring over the data collected by the service’s various instruments. Radiosondes capture the temperature, humidity, and pressure in a given location; buoys off the coast ascertain wind speeds and sea surface temperatures; and satellites show storm-related features in the clouds.

By combining droves of data points, a computerized model can create a graph of current weather conditions, and experienced meteorologists can apply mathematical models and local knowledge to foretell how these conditions will change and impact a region.

“People always joke it’s the job you get paid to be wrong 90% of the time,” Grant says. But although meteorologists work with models that are far from certain, they are correct more often than not. This is especially true in recent years, when meteorologists can collaborate in real time through online discussions and alert their peers to risks or changes that might have been missed if each person were on their own.

The broad reliance on the National Weather Service is usually a good thing. Having publicly accessible data that is standardized and updated regularly helps ensure accuracy from the computerized and mathematical models forecasts are built upon, says Paul Gross, a meteorology consultant and former broadcast meteorologist for WDIV in Detroit. But now, with both staff members and data-providing assets on the chopping block, Gross says there is industry-wide concern that instability and staff reductions at the agency will hinder meteorologists’ ability to warn people about severe weather.

“Even one or two missing data points are a big deal, and now we’re seeing multiple data points that are missing, which is a huge, huge issue,” says Chris Gloninger, a broadcast meteorologist turned climate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. “I don’t think we fully understand the direct impacts just yet to data. … But I fear, even just in these shifts with workforce reduction, that will then lead to data errors going forward.”

Data errors, in disaster preparedness, are serious threats. Tropical cyclones, such as hurricanes, caused an estimated 4,026 deaths and $828.5 billion in damage in the past decade. These made up only 15.3% of the severe weather events during that period.

The Trump administration’s cuts are in line with guidelines set forth in Project 2025, which urged conservatives to “break up NOAA.” Thomas F. Gilman, author of Project 2025’s chapter on the Department of Commerce, wrote that the agency fuels the “climate change alarm industry” and threatens the country’s future prosperity. “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable,” Gilman added.

Instead of relying on NOAA’s predictions and plans, Gilman suggests environmental information, stewardship, and research services should be outsourced to private companies that might be able to provide them at a lower cost and higher quality.

AccuWeather, a leading private-sector weather forecasting company, was named in Project 2025 as a private alternative to the National Weather Service. The company previously lobbied for meteorology’s privatization, which would allow it to charge for forecasting services that are currently free through the government. However, AccuWeather released a statement last year clarifying their position against a fully private-sector version of the National Weather Service. Instead, they call for a multi-sector approach to weather. Public and private services working together has “saved countless lives and significantly reduced the adverse impact of weather on the economy by hundreds of billions of dollars,” notes AccuWeather CEO Steven R. Smith.

Severe weather already kills hundreds of Americans every year, costing the U.S. economy an average of $64.8 billion annually, as of 2024. (The government announced in May that it would no longer be tracking the costs of extreme weather incidents).

With so much at stake, these cuts, which started as part of the effort by Trump’s self-styled Department of Government Efficiency to slash spending, seem counterintuitive to many meteorologists. They point out that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of the severe weather events that can cause billions in damage in unprepared cities.

Mike Nelson, who recently retired after serving as a broadcast meteorologist for 40 years, calls the cuts “just totally irresponsible,” considering the cost of supporting the National Weather Service for one year is under $4 per taxpayer.

“I play devil’s advocate a lot, and I’ve tried to sit back and think: ‘Okay, what is the positive for this?’” Gross said. “I can’t think of a positive — and this is not just me being a meteorologist, being partisan to my field. Every meteorologist will tell you this: my number one job is public safety.”

How much these workforce reductions will impact the safety of people in the path of severe weather is still uncertain. But meteorologists are concerned about the worst-case weather scenarios.

“If we don’t have access to models, if we can’t forecast out five days on a hurricane map, people will die because we cannot prepare people quickly enough to evacuate,” Florida’s MacLaughlin says. “The whole point of the forecast cone … is to prepare people. And little by little, you narrow that cone, and then you can see who’s that most at risk. That cone is our bread and butter here at NBC6. That’s how we save lives.”

Forecast cones are visual representations of where a storm could go next as it moves across land or sea. This movement is more and more uncertain the further into the future it is being predicted, but with constant monitoring, it is usually possible to accurately predict the area that will be hit the hardest. However, with less data collected and fewer meteorologists to monitor the storm, Gross is concerned about a repeat of Mexico’s Hurricane Otis.

Otis was a 2023 storm that underwent rapid intensification — going from a weak tropical storm that was expected to stay offshore to a Category 5 hurricane that made landfall near the busy seaport city of Acapulco. Its severity and path was unexpected and caused 52 deaths and $12 to $16 billion in damage. Meteorologists at the time believed having more funding to collect more data on even smaller-seeming storms could have saved lives. “If we had a few more flights … going into that hurricane, they would have detected that rapid intensification,” Gross suggests.

Now, with even less funding available to meteorologists, these concerns are extending beyond the meteorology community. In April, in a letter to the Trump administration, 25 members of Congress expressed similar concerns about the potential loss of life and property. The legislators, all Democrats, urged the White House to “reverse course” on the NOAA and weather service lay-offs before disaster preparedness suffers.

“The weather impacts so much — tourism, agriculture, transportation, commerce,” says Derek Van Dam, a meteorologist and extreme-weather reporter at CNN. “This is not the place to start cutting because every piece of our lives depends on the infrastructure that NOAA is responsible for. We need to start treating it with the respect that it deserves.”