880 lose jobs at agency over National Weather Service, hurricane center. What is NOAA?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency that forecasts the country's weather, protects ocean species and provides free and comprehensive hurricane, flooding and other dangerous weather warnings to Floridians, lost more than 880 probationary employees Thursday in the latest wave of federal firings, with possibly more to come.

“The hammer came down," said Craig McLean, a former chief scientist and former assistant administrator for research at NOAA.

Like the other federal agencies that have undergone massive purges under orders from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and President Donald Trump, NOAA officials were told to fire "everyone on probationary status," said Andrew Rosenberg, a marine scientist, co-editor of the SciLight newsletter and a former deputy director of NOAA's Fisheries Service. That includes any NOAA employees hired within the last year, or in some cases two years.

It also includes anyone promoted in the same period, meaning many experienced employees with years of institutional knowledge who recently advanced in their jobs were also let go.

A source told CNN that some employees in critical positions may have been exempted. Andrew Hazelton, a researcher responsible for evaluating hurricane forecasts and improving the models the National Hurricane Center uses to track storms, verified on X, formerly Twitter, that he was fired.

How will this affect Florida, a state where lives depend on hurricane forecasts and tornado alerts? NOAA has not commented on how the agency will accommodate the changes, saying it does not discuss personnel and matters.

"NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” spokesman Scott Smullen told USA TODAY.

Hurricane DOGE hits NOAA: Mass job cuts hit NOAA, agency that oversees hurricane center and weather service

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses a vast network of research programs, vessels, satellites, science centers, laboratories, scientists and experts to understand and predict climate and extreme weather impacts. Countless lives have been saved through advance warning of dangerous weather, and many industries rely on NOAA for planning.

Data from NOAA and its agencies inform weather predictions, fisheries management, coastal restoration and marine commerce, along with whatever weather app you use.

NOAA oversees the National Weather Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the National Ocean Service, the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations & NOAA Corps. 

The National Hurricane Center is a division of the NOAA/National Weather Service.

NOAA's weather data going back over a century on the warming climate and its impact on the intensity of rainfall in storms, rising sea levels, coastal flooding, extended droughts and other scientific evidence have made the agency a target of conservatives who dismiss the threat and wish to remove obstructions to business interests.

In his first term, Trump proposed slashing NOAA's budget by 18% and the agency's weather and climate research office by 43%.

On the first day of his second term, Trump rescinded 78 executive orders approved by former President Joe Biden that included efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and signed an executive order leaving the Paris Climate Agreement again. In his first week, Trump ordered federal departments to scrub references to topics that do not fit his priorities, such as mentions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and climate change.

As of early Friday morning, the climate change section on NOAA's website and its standalone site climate.gov are still visible.

Earlier this month, Trump nominated Dr. Neil Jacobs to lead NOAA. Jacobs was Trump's acting NOAA chief in 2019 who backed him up in what became known as Sharpiegate after meteorologists contradicted his claims about where Hurricane Dorian might go and the president doubled down, presenting a hurricane impact map with a crude loop added with a Sharpie, Trump's preferred pen. 

The National Weather Service provides a wealth of detailed, comprehensive weather information and forecasts, all completely for free, used by researchers, weather apps and everyday people every day.

Project 2025, the conservative roadmap and wishlist from right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation, would like people to pay for it instead, and it calls for NOAA to be broken up because the agency "has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity."

After a public backlash to its extreme proposals, Trump disavowed the project during his campaign, but many of his executive orders and the actions of DOGE mirror, if not surpass its recommendations.

The plan also makes a point of stating that "Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy," suggesting that scientific data about the world around us must be changed to fit official policy, rather than the other way around.

The project calls out NOAA specifically for "climate alarmism" and recommends the agency be "dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories."

Among other things, Project 2025 suggests:

• Breaking up NOAA and reassigning the ships and planes used by NOAA to other agencies
• Charging for currently free National Weather Service data
• Transfer NOS Survey functions to the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Geological Survey
• Streamline the National Marine Fisheries Service and reduce or remove regulations on fisheries, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
• Downsize the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and disband the bulk of its climate change research.

No. The project says the department's data provides "important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally."

However, the project does call for a review of all data from the National Hurricane Service and the National Environmental Satellite Service to ensure it is presented neutrally, "without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate." It remains to be seen if ideological pressure will affect the accuracy of NOAA's forecasts.

Former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in an essay on his LinkedIn page that slashing NOAA could reduce the federal budget "if we are willing to kill a few thousand Americans every year, put our economy further into debt, and guarantee the loss of real property around the country.”

Contributing: Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY