The federal agency that produces weather forecasts and leads research on climate and the oceans has canceled leases for research centers and slashed its staff to “devastating” effect, current and former employees tell The Verge. 

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laid off hundreds of probationary employees, who make up roughly 10 percent of its workforce. The agency has plans to lay off around 50 percent of its staff in total, according to Andrew Rosenberg, a former deputy director at NOAA and co-editor of the SciLight newsletter.

The agency has also canceled a lease for a building housing the National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Maryland, which produces information for the National Weather Service, Air Force, Navy, and Federal Aviation Administration, Rosenberg tells The Verge. He also says NOAA has canceled a lease for a radar development lab in Oklahoma. NOAA and the universities housing those facilities did not immediately confirm those cancellations with The Verge. Axios reported separately last Friday that NOAA had canceled leases for office space, without mentioning the locations specifically.  

NOAA staffers are demonstrating today outside of the agency’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, calling attention to risks they see ahead as President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) upend an agency that Americans rely on to stay safe from extreme weather events and flooding.

“I can tell you the losses will be and already are devastating,” a NOAA employee, who was granted anonymity because of the risk of retaliation, tells The Verge. “Believe me when I say, you may not know all the work that goes on behind the scenes, but if these cuts continue, you will feel them personally at some point when that work is gone.” 

The employee says that with the types of cuts they’ve heard proposed, some National Weather Service offices won’t be able to staff their operations desks full time. “I’d challenge anyone to work seven to 10 8-hour shifts in a row, with the stress of knowing your job could be cut arbitrarily at any time, and not make any mistakes through all of that,” they say. “Cutting NOAA staff will invariably cost not only lives, but millions — if not billions — of dollars.”

Weather balloon launches, which are needed to collect data for forecasts, were already suspended in western Alaska last week because of a lack of staffing after layoffs. People who lost their jobs at NOAA were given very little time to exit their offices, let alone prepare for a transition in workloads. They were notified by email last Thursday and given around an hour and half to leave the office, according to Rosenberg and a NOAA employee who lost their job last week and who was also granted anonymity.

Both Rosenberg and the other employees are anticipating further risks to NOAA’s work. After storming NOAA headquarters in February, DOGE reportedly intends to cut NOAA’s budget by 30 percent. 

Project 2025, the right-wing manifesto for the second Trump administration, said NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.” It also proposed leasing out more government allocated radio frequency spectrum for private use, which could lead to more interference with frequencies used for weather forecasting. 

Privatizing weather forecasts — essentially turning a free service into something people have to pay for — could put more Americans at risk during extreme weather events, sources tell The Verge. So, too, does auctioning off too much radio frequency spectrum if that interferes with the collection of data needed to make forecasts.

“Gutting NOAA puts Americans in danger,” says the former employee. “Trump and DOGE aren’t ‘trimming the fat,’ they are hobbling the services that all of us rely on every day to stay safe, to do business, and to live our lives peacefully.”

This post was originally published on this site