Late last month, Rebecca Howard was fired from her dream job. With less than two hours’ notice, the research biologist was told to leave her position with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, surveying Alaskan shellfish and pollock populations.
Howard is one of the more than 1,000 employees affected by the recent layoffs at NOAA. As a science branch of the Department of Commerce, the agency plays a crucial role in climate research, ecosystem restoration, and oversight of commercial fisheries. The National Weather Service, which provides the data that powers weather apps on phones and informs local meteorologists, is an agency within NOAA.
As part of the Trump administration’s effort to slash the federal budget across various departments, over the last month the agency has fired hundreds of probationary employees — staff that were hired or promoted to a new position in the last year — regardless of their duties. The agency is now reportedly preparing to lay off an additional 1,029 employees, representing a cumulative 20 percent reduction of its workforce. Last week, federal judges in California and Maryland ordered the Trump administration to rehire probationary staffers who were let go.
Howard was one of the probationary employees affected by the first round of layoffs, and said the fisheries management projects she was involved in were being conducted by understaffed teams. As researchers like her leave, she said it’s not clear how the work will continue.
“We need these types of data to know how many fish and crabs we can catch each year, where those populations are going as the oceans change, and to keep track of environmental trends,” Howard said during a press conference organized by Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat representing Washington. Howard pointed out that when a survey of shellfish in the Bering Sea was missed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alaska’s $200 million snow crab fishery collapsed the following year. “Firing people like me will make it incredibly hard for NOAA Fisheries to fulfill its mission,” she said.
The Department of Government Efficiency, the budget-cutting entity spearheaded by Elon Musk, has also proposed terminating leases for 19 properties used by NOAA for its operations. Separately, the General Services Administration designated an additional 13 buildings owned by the agency as “not core to government operations.” The buildings include law enforcement offices for fisheries, a control room that oversees a fleet of 15 weather satellites, and an information center that houses more than a century of climate data archives.
Climate scientists are also worried about the possible closure of an office that supports the Mauna Loa Observatory, which supplies the longest-running record of atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements. The research station supplies the data behind the Keeling Curve, a graph that shows how much of the planet-warming gas has accumulated in the atmosphere since it was established in 1958.
“Political leadership in this administration doesn’t know the agency’s mission, and they don’t care,” said Richard Spinrad, the former NOAA chief who led the agency during the Biden administration, during the press conference. “These actions are not the strategic moves of a government looking out for its pockets. They are the unnecessary and malicious acts of a shambolic administration.”
NOAA’s $9.8 billion budget represents just 0.097 percent of all federal spending, and its employees represent less than 0.5 percent of the entire federal workforce. But because of the agency’s wide-ranging duties and the indiscriminate nature of the cuts, Spinrad says the damage will be felt through virtually “every business sector, every geographic region of the country, and every component of American society.” And as extreme weather services — like flood forecasts, hurricane outlooks, tsunami warnings, and wildfire monitoring — are compromised, American lives will be threatened, he said.
The reduction in staff is already hampering operations. The agency has suspended the launch of some weather balloons, which are a key tool in recording atmospheric conditions and real-time storm tracking. NOAA launches these balloons daily to collect crucial data, and without it, weather forecasts could become less accurate over time. The agency has also canceled its long-standing monthly briefings with reporters about seasonal forecasts and global climate conditions.
“The cuts already have been hugely disruptive, and the impacts are growing,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told Grist. “Some of [the problems] will manifest during extreme events, and then some of them will probably just take some time to show themselves.”
Swain pointed to the recent deadly outbreak of tornadoes and wildfires as examples of when “the 24/7 life-saving duties of the National Weather Service are on full display.” A spate of wildfires torched nearly 300 homes in Oklahoma, and at least 40 were left dead after a surge of tornadoes and dust storms tore through the Midwest and South. During these types of extreme weather events, NOAA meteorologists provide real-time updates to first responders, issue public alerts, and help local authorities track storms as they develop. But key hubs for this work, such as The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, are among the NOAA facilities that DOGE is considering closing. Local news outlets reported that there may not be enough staff left to adequately respond to tornado events due to layoffs.
“This is the kind of moment where you might start to see the tangible, real-world, and genuinely life-threatening impacts of these staffing gaps,” Swain said. “These people, despite being in lifesaving roles, were fired without notice or justification.”
On Monday, some NOAA probationary employees who were fired, including Howard, the fisheries research biologist, were rehired as mandated by federal court orders. Howard said the reinstatement email she received placed her on administrative leave, and that there’s been “no indication” when she will be allowed to return to work.
“I had been working toward a career in marine science since I was a child,” she said. “Being put back in that stressful situation is not something I would look forward to, but this is what I wanted to do with my career.”
