Seth Borenstein
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is starting another round of work — which is more than 1,000 people — in the U.S. Weather, Oceans and Fisheries Bureau, four people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began planning to release 10% of its current workforce, some of whom asked to be anonymous due to fear of retribution. The people said those numbers have been submitted to NOAA employees and managers are asked to submit names of layoff positions to the agency headquarters, which will head to NOAA’s parent company, Commerce Department, on Wednesday.
Three former NOAA senior officials — two former political appointments from the Biden administration — talk regularly with managers of old institutions, using the same number to lay off employees: 1,029, or 10% of the current 10,290. They spoke with several people still in the NOAA, and current agency staff detailed the cuts that the manager explained to employees.
Although most people know NOAA and its daily weather forecasts, the agency also monitors and warns of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and tsunamis, manages the country's fisheries, operates marine protected areas, provides navigation information for climate and ocean changes, and observes changes in vessels. The agency is also playing a role in warning avalanches and space weather that could damage the power grid. It helps deal with disasters including oil leakage.
The new cuts came after an earlier Trump administration shot and encouraged retirement at NOAA and eliminated nearly all new employees last month. NOAA will remove a quarter of the jobs since the president took office in January after the upcoming layoffs.
“It’s not the efficiency of the government,” said Rick Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator. “This is the first step toward elimination. There is no ability to remove or strongly compromise the task, such cuts cannot be made.”
Spinrad said the cuts are being ordered without specific guidance from the Trump administration on how or where, making the situation worse.
NOAA spokesman Monica Allen said the agency’s policy is not to discuss internal personnel matters, but NOAA will “continue to provide weather information, forecasts and warnings based on our public safety mission.”
The agency said last week that NOAA has stopped releasing some weather balloons that have collected crucial observations in two locations (Albany, New York and Gray, Maine).
This all happened as severe storm systems are expected to break out in the central and southern parts of the country later this week, moving with intense tornadoes, hail and destructive wind energy amidst multiple days of outbreaks.
Craig McLean, former NOAA chief scientist, warned that weather forecasts will worsen, and “people will start seeing this soon.” This will also limit how much commercial fishermen can catch, he said.
Most importantly, cutting the university’s research grants will also make it harder for the United States to improve its weather forecasts and better monitor the planet, McLean said.
“People are silently watching the decline of the United States as a technology leader,” McLean said. “The United States is on the moon, but our weather forecast will not be the biggest.”
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