The gutting of US weather forecasting abilities could prove very deadly

This story was originally published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This isn’t what I had in mind when I studied Edward Lorenz’s chaos theory.

Lorenz was a mathematician and meteorologist perhaps most famous for his description of the “butterfly effect,” which poses that small changes in initial conditions can produce large changes in long-term results. This became evident to him when running numerical weather forecasting models, in which even the rounding of a variable from six digits to three digits would lead to vastly different predicted outcomes in the atmosphere. His work led to great leaps in weather forecasting, and today’s era of ensemble forecasting in which multiple weather predictions are generated from the same set of different yet similar initial meteorological conditions.

The butterfly effect came to mind when I read that upper air weather observations were being temporarily halted by the National Weather Service in parts of Alaska, New York, and Maine due to staffing shortages. The Trump regime’s chaotic approach to so-called efficiency in the federal workforce has wreaked havoc upon civil service, including at NWS and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NWS was already short-staffed before the new administration came into power. I have firsthand knowledge of Meteorologists in Charge, the title for the director at each NWS office, forced to cover operational shifts (including overnights) several weeks a year to be able to keep their offices functioning.

Now hundreds more NOAA and NWS employees have been fired.

With offices running on skeleton crews, the NWS Weather Forecast Offices in Kotzebue, Alaska; Albany, New York; and Gray, Maine; simply can’t spare the man-hours to launch their radiosondes. These instrument packages are attached to weather balloons that lift them through the troposphere, or the lowest layer of the atmosphere within which all the weather happens.

Temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind data collected by the radiosondes allow meteorologists to determine the profile and stability of the atmosphere twice a day over specific, strategically selected locations. It also feeds into the dynamical weather models that have so impressively advanced in their capability to forecast the weather since the Lorenz era.

On the days these atmospheric profiles go missing, weather forecast quality will suffer. It’s worse than Lorenz’s rounding of variables—it’s holes that will lead to less granularity in data being ingested into the models that will inevitably lead to poorer predictions. And while that may be fine on a 30 degree Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) summer day in which, perhaps, it ends up partly sunny instead of mostly sunny, it’s a whole different story when we’re talking about knowing whether a future Sandy-like superstorm takes a left turn into New York City or not.

Balloon-launch gaps are only one example of critical meteorological information that is on track to go missing in 2025. Two flight directors and an electronic engineer from NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters were fired too. The flight directors’ job was to evaluate weather conditions in tropical cyclones to ensure the safety of the mission from a meteorological perspective. Understandably, every reconnaissance flight must have a flight director on board.

Now, some flights this hurricane season are in jeopardy because they may not have a flight director available. While the Air Force Reserve 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron also flies into storms, any reduction in the combined number of NOAA and Air Force flights into fledgling tropical storms could lead to disaster.

This is no exaggeration. Two recent major disasters in Mexico’s Pacific coast came without warning because of the lack of hurricane hunter data: Hurricanes Otis in 2023 and John in 2024. Aircraft reconnaissance simply isn’t flown as often in the eastern Pacific as it is in the Atlantic for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. The data gaps in 2023-24 resulted in Acapulco and nearby areas being devastated by storms that were first forecast by the NWS’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) to be relatively benign.

Both Otis and John underwent extremely rapid intensification that turned them from modest tropical storms into major destructive hurricanes in the span of about a day. NHC’s methods for remotely estimating storm intensity were insufficient and imprecise compared to the direct measurements that hurricane hunters provide.

In the case of Hurricane Otis, this lack of information turned into a “nightmare” underestimation of its intensity which left those in its path with very little time to prepare. Based on satellite imagery, NHC was estimating Otis to be either a strong tropical storm or a category 1 or 2 hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale when the only reconnaissance mission flown into the cyclone arrived. The Air Force crew recorded windspeeds already at category 3, and the hurricane continued to intensify all the way until it made landfall near Acapulco causing death and widespread destruction.

I’m confident that NHC forecasters suffered through some sleepless nights thinking of how just one more hurricane hunter flight may have saved lives. After all, NWS and its NHC branch are two of several US government agencies that pursue the most noble of goals: to save lives. In its mission statement, NWS states that it exists “for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.” In the United States, life and property are considered so sacrosanct that their protection is enshrined in 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.

Speaking of property, think for a moment about why NOAA sits within the Department of Commerce? Weather can impact the economy in many ways, and when it becomes extreme, monetary losses can spread regionally to a majority of businesses. The United States has sustained hundreds of weather and climate disasters since 1980 in which overall costs reached at least $1 billion. Added together, the total cost of these 403 events from 1980 to 2024 approaches $3 trillion (with a “T”).

Yet when it comes to protecting the economy and our people from clear and present dangers like disease (the work of agencies such as NIH, CDC, FDA, USDA, USAID), environmental degradation (e.g. EPA, Dept. of Interior), and severe weather (e.g. NOAA/NWS), the new administration is throwing caution to the wind and allowed the DOGE wrecking ball to swing wildly and indiscriminately.

Shortly after coming into power in January, the administration concocted a “deferred resignation” program to start thinning out the federal ranks. According to the White House, about 75,000 federal employees signed up. That was followed in February by broad firings of federal workers during their probationary period—generally one or two years into their new jobs. As of March 7, more than 100,000 employees have been fired or offered buyouts.

Many of the fired civil servants on probation were not new hires fresh out of college. I know of very experienced and valuable NOAA employees that were two decades into their careers but had recently been promoted. Because every government promotion comes with probationary status, they’ve now lost their jobs.

Or have they?

Part of the chaos we’re living through is that the president and advisers—maybe deliberately—can’t seem to make up their minds. The second weekend in March, the termination of probationary staff at NWS was apparently rescinded. At the same time, it was reported that NOAA needs to prepare for another round of firings that would lead to the loss of another 1,000 workers. We can’t lose sight of the fact that the dismantling of NOAA is an integral part of Project 2025 because, according to the Heritage Foundation, it is a source of “climate alarmism.”

All signs point to the dismemberment of the national meteorological and hydrological service (NMHS) that had been the envy of the world. Whether it is by hitting it with a sledgehammer or delivering death by 1,000 cuts, NOAA and NWS staff are already spread thin and demoralized. The ability to observe, forecast, and warn of impactful weather is being degraded. This is putting American lives and the American economy in danger.

I may be known for my hurricane acumen, but I cannot do my job without NOAA. I may be the voice of reason in a storm, but the NWS serves as my vocal cords. The American public needs to relentlessly continue contacting their elected representatives to save NOAA and NWS, and more broadly, to save science, which is under siege in this country.

Because without the National Weather Service, there is no Jim Cantore, no Al Roker, and no John Morales.