Retired federal scientists warn that the Trump administration’s proposed NOAA budget cuts could be expensive and could undermine the accuracy of forecasts.
NOAA, FEMA cuts will affect hurricane season, experts warn
Experts warn that the Trump administration’s budget cuts at NOAA and FEMA will have a negative impact on how the US responds to hurricanes.
The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the country’s atmospheric research program has warned that it could set forecasts for generations and beyond that warn retired federal hurricane executives that they are warning.
The White House proposed budget for the National Maritime and Atmospheric Administration is nearly half the amount of a year ago, eliminating all funding from the Bureau of Atmospheric Research, the department that coordinates and conducts weather and climate research across the country.
The US forecast “all progress will halt,” said James Franklin, who retired in 2017 as head of forecast specialist at the National Hurricane Center.
Repealing that research would be a “generational loss” for any progress that could have been made over the next decade or more, Franklin said. “We’re stagnant and we’re not going to continue to improve as we move forward.”
The atmospheric lab, also known as NOAA Research, supports much of the agency’s work and scientific advancement, whether to more accurately predict or track tsunamis, chemical and wildfire smoke.
They say reimbursing research programs will carry a huge cost — improving forecasts can save as much as $5 billion per storm, and lack of forecasts puts lives at risk.
Dozens of civilian weather forecasters, television meteorologists and academics have expressed similar concerns on social media, broadcasts, blogs and newsletters, saying that degradation in forecast accuracy will affect millions of other Americans, whether they know or not to farmers, aircraft pilots, passengers, and millions of other Americans.
NOAA reductions, combined with other proposed cuts and contracts with federal government-wide cancelled grants, are seen by many scientists and academics as a drastic attack on American science.
NOAA’s White House budget is 40% less
The White House proposed an estimated direct program budget of $3.5 billion for NOAA. It’s about $2.3 billion lower than this fiscal year, a reduction of almost 40%.
NOAA Study’s 2026 line items are blank compared to an estimated $68 million in 2025. The only office under the NOAA umbrella is the National Weather Service, which saw a $71 million increase in direct program budget, an estimated total of $1.3 billion.
At a June 5 hearing at Capitol Hill, Commerce Director Howard Lutnick defended Cut, saying NOAA is “changering the way we track storms and predict the weather with cutting edge technology.” USA Today contacted the commerce department and NOAA to comment on Lutnick’s remarks to Congress but was not responded.
A former NOAA official says the transformational work will cease if budget cuts are approved, especially when combined with massive cuts that have already been staffed, research, grants and collaborative programs with numerous universities.
Craig McLean, the NOAA chief scientist and former assistant manager of the study, said he has shown little practical knowledge of how the country’s weather system works, including government efficiency and cuts by the Office of Control and Budget.
He compares reducing management with dismantling the engine of a car and tries to undo it without the parts you don’t understand.
Conservatives propose to curb “climate change alarms”
Many of the measures taken so far reflect recommendations from the Heritage Foundation Project 2025, which proposes to demolish NOAA and targets agency work on climate surveillance and climate change.
Project 2025 has formed “a huge operation that will become one of the leading drivers in the climate change warning industry and harm the future of the United States” in NOAA’s six major offices, including the research, satellite, marine services, fisheries, marine and aviation sectors.
In its budget document, the White House states that some of the NOAA research and grant programs will “spread environmental warnings.” In mid-June, a team of at least half a dozen people were fired who wrote and produced Climate.gov, a website that supports science education and explains complex science and weather to the public.
Agency veterans say the administration’s campaign against climate research fails to acknowledge its role in daily weather, and mischaracterizes how NOAA research supports daily forecasts of all kinds of extreme weather.
NOAA’s research goes far beyond well-documented, changing climates, said Alan Gerald, who recently retired from the agency’s intense storm lab. For example, he said the cut could be “disastrous” to improve tornado warnings.
Experts say budget cuts put national research networks at risk
NOAA Research’s nine laboratories, 16 cooperative institutions, and other networks of partnerships with universities, said they will collect and share weather data and use it to develop new predictive models, new tools and better techniques to save lives.
The department’s work has been praised as advances in modeling and forecasting in support of both the Hurricane Centre and the Weather Service.
John Cortinus, former assistant deputy administrator of OAR’s science, cited a list of ongoing forecast improvement projects. For example, Storms Laboratory is developing “next-generation radar” to improve tornado prediction, Cortinas said. “But if the White House is cut as proposed, the lab will disappear and that’s over.”
The Pacific Marine Environment Research Institute is working on the next generation offshore buoys.
Global Systems Laboratory develops a country’s weather forecast model and conducts research into fire climate and wildfires. Cortinus said it is working to improve forecasts for hyperlocal extreme rainfall events, such as those that caused massive flooding in Minnesota and Kentucky earlier this year.
Several projects were passed in Congress early in his first term in 2017 and signed into law by President Donald Trump, and are rooted in the Weather Research and Predictive Innovation Act. The Congressional Research Services Report, released on June 10, 2025, noted that NOAA has not made any details about the proposed budget, saying that the available documents do not discuss how NOAA will approve liability.
Balloon launches have widespread forecast impacts
Franklin began his 35-year career at NOAA’s Atlantic Ascent Graphics & Meteorological Research Institute, which includes the Hurricane Research Division. He spoke a lot about the steps being made to improve predictions, and expressed his frustration with the hurdles still present in predicting hurricane strength.
Over the past decade, NOAA has shaved a predicted track error margin of 27% in 36 hours and 18% in 72 hours. In 2024, the Hurricane Center set the most accurate record of predictions in history, according to a preliminary analysis of the Atmospheric Research Institute at Colorado State University.
“The five-day forecast for a hurricane truck is as accurate as the three-day forecast was 20 years ago,” former NOAA manager Rick Spinrad told USA Today.
Franklin fears budget cuts will put those improvements at risk. For example, he points to weather balloon launches that have been restricted or cancelled at some weather service offices. The office is tackling staffing shortages after administrators have fired some probation employees and provided incentive-based retirements to reduce the size of federal bureaucrats.
It may be difficult to imagine that data collected from balloons launched in the Great Plains could affect hurricane predictions on the East Coast or Gulf Coast, but both Franklin and Gerald say.
Franklin said the launch provides important information about moisture and outstanding winds in large systems that could pilot or interact with an approaching tropical system. “If you pass through an area with less balloon range, your predictions can change slightly and deteriorate,” he said, the greater the area where data is missing, the greater the risk of errors in hurricane landing predictions.
Experts say better predictions save money and lives
Franklin and others cited a 2024 study by the National Economic Research Bureau that found NOAA’s Hurricane Prediction Improvement Program saved about $5 billion per hurricane per year on protection spending before Landfall and damage and recovery after Landfall.
“Poor forecasting increases the cost of responding to hurricanes,” he said. “This is a lot of cost savings that we’re trying to give up here. I’m going to turn off all the potential savings, saying I don’t care if the forecast doesn’t keep improving.”
Dinah Voyles Purver covers USA Today’s climate change, hurricanes and disasters. Contact her at dpulver@usatoday.com or dinahvp.77 on the signal.
