The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has cut around 10 percent of its workforce and is canceling research center leases as part of President Donald Trump's government efficiency efforts.
First reported by The Verge, the job cuts are being spearheaded by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and currently include hundreds of probationary workers. Former deputy director Andrew Rosenberg told The Verge that around 50 percent could be cut in total.
NOAA is responsible for the National Weather Service and monitors for severe storms, including hurricanes and tornados. According to the NOAA website, the agency has around 12,000 members of staff worldwide.
In addition to laying off employees, The Verge reported Rosenberg as saying that NOAA has canceled a lease for the building which houses the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Maryland, which produces information for the National Weather Service, Air Force, Navy, and Federal Aviation Administration. As confirmed by an anonymous NOAA employee, NOAA has also canceled a lease for the Radar Operations Center in Normon, Oklahoma.
The NCEP building includes the Environmental Modeling Center, which runs the computer models needed for day-to-day weather forecasting. The facility was opened in 2012 and spans around 268,000 sq ft (24,898 sqm), including a 10,000 sq ft (929 sqm) data center. It does not seem to be one of the data centers housing NOAA's supercomputers. The lease cancelation is not yet final and currently has an end date of 'TBD' according to reports.
The NOAA employee told The Verge that the cuts may mean National Weather Service offices won't be able to staff its operations full-time. "I’d challenge anyone to work seven to ten 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. Cutting NOAA staff will invariably cost not only lives, but millions — if not billions — of dollars.”
Beyond monitoring extreme weather risks, NOAA's weather forecasting has a dramatic impact on agricultural industries in the US and, by extension, the stock market.
Currently, only the two leases seem to have been canceled, but Rosenberg and NOAA employees are expecting further risks to NOAA's work from DOGE's cutbacks.
NOAA also operates five high-performance computing (HPC) data centers located in Fairmont, West Virginia; Boulder, Colorado; Princeton, New Jersey; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and on the campus of Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi. In November 2024, NOAA was awarded $99 million in funding for a new Rhea supercomputer that would be housed at the Fairmont campus.
This week has also seen DOGE shutting down the technology consulting unit of the General Services Administration, which helps run the IRS' tax filing system. Last month, reports emerged that the Department of Energy was set to see 2,000 employees laid off, including in the Grid Deployment Office, which looks to accelerate the development of new and upgraded electric infrastructure across the country, the Offshore Wind Team, and the Office of General Counsel. Cuts have also been seen across the US National Science Foundation's workforce.
DCD covered the compute behind weather forecasting extensively in its previous magazine. The full feature can be read here.
