BalancedWx Special: NOAA releases its FY26 budget justification document

It's still the OMB budget - but now with all the gory disastrous details

Earlier today, NOAA finally posted online its Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget estimate and Congressional justification document, the so-called “Blue Book” document. This is essentially the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed FY26 budget that was released at the end of May, but with a lot more detail from NOAA leadership about the justifications and how various aspects of the budget would be managed and implemented.

This document is getting a lot of attention today from the weather community and more broadly on social media. To be honest, though, there really do not appear to be many surprises from a quick read through of the document. The reason it is getting so much attention in my opinion is because it is jarring to read such hugely damaging cuts to our science and public safety programs spelled out in such antiseptic, matter-of-fact language. I will readily admit that it was hard for me to read this document as someone who has spent more than three decades helping to build parts of NOAA’s weather research and operations infrastructure - and I am sure it is much harder for my colleagues who are still active as NOAA scientists and employees.

While I say there are not many surprises, I do obviously think it is important for people to fully understand the ramifications of what is being outlined here, so I will go through it in some level of detail and share my perspectives from being a long time NOAA leader within the weather part of the agency. I am also going to share quotes from the document extensively because I think it is important for everyone to see the actual wording of these cuts to more viscerally understand what we are talking about.

Finally, it is critical again to recognize that while in theory the President’s budget is just the initial step in the FY26 budgetary process and that Congress must now weigh in through their appropriations process, this administration has made it clear that this budget represents their plans for managing the executive branch and that they believe that they can use budget rescission and impoundment to help achieve their goals regardless of Congressional budget action. So while this is still “just a proposal” and Congressional action is still to come, I do think it is crucial for everyone to realize that this document clearly outlines administration priorities for NOAA that they will likely try to start implementing as quickly and aggressively as they can.

Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR, NOAA Research)

As I have outlined in previous posts, the FY26 President’s Budget completely eliminates OAR. From the NOAA budget document:

For FY 2026, NOAA requests a total of $0 and 0 FTE (ed. note FTE=Full Time Employee)/ 0 positions for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

With the goal to streamline program management and focus on NOAA’s weather mission, NOAA is proposing to eliminate OAR as a NOAA Line Office and transfer several activities to NOS and the NWS. The FY 2026 budget eliminates all funding for climate, weather, and ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes. It also does not fund Regional Climate Data and Information, Climate Competitive Research, the National Sea Grant College Program, Sea Grant Aquaculture Research, or the National Oceanographic Partnership Program. Of the remaining funded programs, the U.S. Weather Research Program, Tornado Severe Storm Research / Phased Array Radar, the Joint Technology Transfer Initiative, High Performance Computing Initiatives, and Research Supercomputing will be transitioned to the NWS, and Ocean Exploration and Research, Integrated Ocean Acidification, and Sustained Ocean Observations and Monitoring will be transitioned to NOS. These adjustments will allow these research programs to carry out research that is more directly related to the NOAA mission.

So let’s break this down in more detail. First off, it is clear that the administration is gutting and eliminating anything that has the word “climate” in it or associated with it. Everything in OAR’s portfolio that had anything to do with climate is essentially gone in this budget. OAR’s Competitive Climate Research Program, a $70M program that funded academic institutions to do groundbreaking climate related research, is terminated with this as the justification:

NOAA will continue to support high priority ocean and weather research programs in NOS and NWS. With this termination, NOAA will no longer support climate research grants.

That’s it - with that statement, the administration signals its intent to have NOAA, arguably the world’s leading oceanic and atmospheric governmental organization, completely abandon climate science. Of course, this is not too surprising given the administration’s stance toward climate change - literally while I was writing this, I saw this BlueSky post from climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe:

Again, though, it is important to recognize that the “climate” topic is not just about “climate change.” El Nino/La Nina, seasonal forecasting, and understanding our planetary climate are just a few examples of important climate related topics that will be ignored given this stance from the administration. As an example, the NOAA Regional Climate Centers, which provide important climate related services to the public, agriculture and business communities and which dealt with a much publicized budget shortfall earlier this year, would be zeroed out and eliminated.

Of course, it is not just climate that gets eliminated under this budget proposal.

Termination of OAR’s Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (-$90,156, -244 FTE/ -285 Positions) – NOAA requests this termination in order to support Administration priorities. NOAA will continue to support high priority weather research programs in NWS.

(Ed. Note: the text in bold is the amount of budget change in thousands, i.e., $90.156M, and then the reduction in employees, FTE being full time employees and positions being the total of all positions.)

In coordination with the requested terminations for Climate Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes and Ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes, NOAA will close the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in Miami, FL; the Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) in College Park, MD, Idaho Falls, ID, and Oak Ridge, TN, as well as a nation-wide network of soil moisture sensors; the Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) in Boulder, CO; the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, NJ; the Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) in Boulder, CO, Utqiaġvik, AK, Mauna Loa, HI, Hilo, HI, Big Island, HI, American Samoa, and the South Pole; the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) in Boulder, CO; the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, OK; the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, WA; and the Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) in Boulder, CO.

NOAA will discontinue funding for activities previously supported by the Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes Subactivity including the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX) and the Warn on Forecast (WoF) system. NOAA will evaluate options for supporting these specific activities within the NWS in the future.

So with these paragraphs, the administration is eliminating a rich infrastructure of NOAA federal labs and related university cooperative institutes that go back decades and developed so much ground breaking research that is literally too long to list, but I will summarize like this: when you look at an NWS Doppler radar image, when you see an article talking about the dramatic improvements in hurricane forecasting in the last couple of decades, when you see scientists showing the Keeling Curve of global carbon dioxide - all of that (and of course so much more) is the result of the work of OAR labs and cooperative institutes. (Former NHC forecaster branch chief James Franklin has a great BlueSky thread listing some of the hurricane related forecast improvements that have come from NOAA research labs.) I encourage you to read my post from a couple of weeks ago for more about the impacts of the elimination of the OAR labs and cooperative institutes. It is important to recognize that when the budget document says that 285 positions will be eliminated through this budget action, they are talking strictly about federal positions. There are literally thousands of university jobs across the country funded through OAR and the NOAA Cooperative Institutes - not just scientists, but administrative, technicians, etc. - that would be eliminated with this proposal.

One piece of “news” that came out of this detailed budget document is that the administration does plan to eliminate the VORTEX programs and the dedicated funding provided to NSSL for Warn-on-Forecast R&D. The document states that “the Budget transitions U.S. Weather Research Program, Tornado Severe Storm / Phased Array Radar, and Joint Technology Transfer Institute to the NWS.” As I discussed when earlier versions of these budget proposals came out, while these titles have generic lines that might make one think that substantial parts of OAR’s weather research are being moved to NWS, in fact these are very specific budget lines and programs that have been part of the OAR Weather Labs and Cooperative Institutes Budget.

The US Weather Research Program (USWRP) is a ~$40M program to fund competitive research grants on weather topics important to NOAA, including the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), while the Joint Technology Transfer Initiative (not Institute as it says in the NOAA budget justification document - the fact that mistakes like this are common in the document is a whole additional concern) is a ~$12M program to fund grants to fund operationally focused research projects that are nearing operational readiness. Both of these budget lines and their associated authorized federal positions (24 in total) would be moved to NWS under the budget document. The document states that “these adjustments will allow these research programs to carry out research that is more directly related to the NOAA mission.” But the reality is that USWRP and JTTI already were focused on NOAA related weather needs, and the funding priorities were established in collaboration with the NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (STI), the NWS entity that USWRP and JTTI are being moved to.

The third item in the list of OAR projects being moved from the Weather Labs/CI budget to NWS is “Tornado Severe Storm/Phased Array Radar.” Again, this is not the tornado and severe storm research of NSSL writ large, this is specifically the funding that is provided to NSSL to do research and development on phased array radar as the possible national next generation weather radar system. This is about a $20M program that is also being moved to NWS STI; I will talk more about this in the NWS section below.

Finally, I want to highlight the termination of the National Sea Grant College Program:

Termination of OAR’s National Sea Grant Program (-$80,000, -20 FTE/ -20 Positions) - NOAA requests the termination of the National Sea Grant College Program.

NOAA will eliminate funding for the 33 Sea Grant programs located in coastal States and territories. Individual Sea Grant chapters receive funds from their respective states and other sources as part of the required matching of Federal funds under the Sea Grant Program; as such, the full extent of the impact of this termination of NOAA funds will vary by state.

NOAA Sea Grant is an extension program similar to the USDA Land Grant cooperative extension program, only focused on coastal and marine issues. Again, while the budget document says this eliminates 20 positions, these are only the federal employees. Sea Grant supports hundreds of extension agents and scientists in its 33 individual programs in partnership with universities around the country. Elimination of Sea Grant would be a true tragedy for the coastal communities that are served by its extension and education programs.

National Weather Service (NWS)

At a high level, NWS appears to do pretty well in this budget document, with an overall increase of about $91M (~7%) over its current budgetary level. However, it is important to recognize that pretty much all of that increase comes strictly from moving the various programs from OAR to NWS we discussed above (USWRP, JTTI, PAR, and also High Performance Computing). Given that one assumes that at least the administration’s intent is for those programs to continue more or less as they exist currently in OAR, that means that the budget for NWS is essentially flat.

This brings me to a key concern, namely the potential for research and development to be cannibalized by operational needs. In the current structure of NOAA, OAR is a separate line office from NWS, meaning that the research part of NOAA is essentially “protected” from the operational aspect. If these research programs become a part of NWS, it will be much easier for NWS to utilize that money in a way to emphasize operational needs versus developing new capabilities. To be clear, I am not even stating this with any negativity; the NWS has a life-safety operational mission, and meeting that mission has to be the priority. In my opinion, the separation in line office missions and budget appropriations between operations and research has always been a strength of NOAA that helped keep it moving forward, and it would clearly be lost under this budget proposal.

Another area of interest to me in the NWS part of this document relates to radar and the development of the RadarNext program.

Establish Radar Next Program (+$500, 0 FTE/ 0 Positions) - NOAA requests this increase to formally establish the next generation radar program, known as Radar Next, to address the expected gap in radar service, improve low elevation radar coverage for vulnerable areas, and introduce technology to improve timelines for issuing warnings for severe weather. Through Radar Next, NWS will continue efforts for the acquisition, integration, and implementation of a follow-on radar capability to provide continuity and meet emerging requirements for NOAA’s most important observational system.

Based on initial analysis completed by MITRE, the current NEXRAD system is at a high risk of not being able to maintain a target availability of 96 percent in approximately 10 years based on risk factors such as the supply chain, and component repairability. Loss of this substantial weather radar network without a future alternative would be detrimental, leading to multiple radar outages that would cause significantly reduced severe storm and flash flood detection negatively impacting warning and advisory lead times.

The Radar Next acquisition will provide for a follow-on to the current NEXRAD system. While the NEXRAD Service Life Extension Program extends the current radar’s useful life, it does not address all the at-risk components within the system. Supply chain constraints continue to present risk to the availability of critical NEXRAD components and availability of the overall network. Absent this capability, there is a threat of future long-duration/multi-radar outages that would undermine the ability of the NWS to provide vital, life saving warnings and IDSS to core partners and emergency managers in support of the American public.

The health of the national NEXRAD Doppler weather radar network is, I think it is safe to say, a huge concern of many in the weather community. The NEXRAD system is more than 30 years old, and as this blurb from the budget document correctly points out, while the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) has helped extend the system’s useful life, there are many at-risk components which endanger the aging system.

One thing that the budget document does not mention but that gives me extra concern about the NEXRAD system is the NWS capability to maintain the radar. Each office has a cadre of electronics technicians to maintain the observational equipment for that office, including the NEXRAD radars. I recently received from a retired NWS colleague a map with the status of electronics and IT staffing within the individual NWS offices as of the end of May. It shows 15 of the 122 offices having less than 50% of nominal staffing, and one office (Central Illinois) having no electronics or IT staffing. While the interoffice breakdown may have some adjustments since then due to reassignments that the NWS worked on in the last month, the total numbers overall are the same.

My concern is not totally about the numbers anyway - it is about the experience that was lost with the buyout earlier this year. When I was the meteorologist-in-charge of the NWS office in Jackson, MS, I was responsible for overseeing our electronics maintenance program, and I know that maintaining an aging, complex piece of electronics like a NEXRAD radar system takes experienced technicians. While I do not have exact numbers, based on the map above I have to guess that NWS lost dozens of experienced electronics technicians in the buyout with hundreds of years of experience. This is an irreplaceable loss, and is particularly concerning given the aging state of the NEXRAD system.

Speaking for myself, I was already concerned that the 2035 estimate of potential critical system breakdown could be optimistic given the current frequency of radar failures and increasing supply chain issues. Knowing the amount of maintenance experience that has been lost only increases my concern. The NEXRAD network is not just a crucial observing system for the weather community; it is truly crucial infrastructure for society as a whole. I think it is safe to say that Americans take for granted that whenever they want or need to, they can find a weather radar image to check on approaching weather. They are almost certainly unaware that capability is based upon aging circa 1980s technology that is maintained by an NWS that has been left increasingly wanting for resources.

The establishment of a formal Radar Next program to work on this issue is an important step, and one that the NWS has been advocating for at least a couple of years now. However, this program is obviously in its early stages, and is just beginning to evaluate potential solutions. The Phased Array Radar (PAR) R&D program that is being proposed to be moved from NSSL to NWS is a key part of NOAA’s exploration of new radar technologies that could make tangible improvements to warnings and forecasts, and at least based on this budget proposal the administration appears to plan to continue it. Regardless, it is critical for the nation that NOAA prioritize the research, development and evaluation activities to identify and develop a new radar network, while working to keep the current NEXRAD system viable while new alternatives are developed. I plan to dedicate some future newsletters and videos to exploring these issues.

Rest of NOAA and concluding thoughts

My expertise and knowledge with regard to NOAA is with the weather, climate and hydrology aspects of the agency, which is why I have focused on this here. Obviously, NOAA does a lot more than this, including oceanic research, fisheries, marine sanctuaries, etc. The “wet” side of NOAA is looking at approximately a 30% cut under the President’s budget proposal, so while I cannot comment about these cuts at the level of detail I can about the “dry” side of NOAA, clearly the “wet” side is also in line for serious impacts.

The broadness of the cuts to science are what I want to end with here. It is important to recognize that what we are seeing with NOAA is obviously just one part of what is a broader administration effort that will seriously damage our nation’s scientific enterprise. Whether we are talking about NOAA, NSF, USGS, NIH, NASA, EPA - all of the scientific agencies are in the cross-hairs of the current administration as far as significant budget and resource cuts.

I think we as a society take for granted that science and technology will continue to progress, without appreciating the tremendous public-private partnership and infrastructure that supports those advances. We made a very intentional decision as a society after World War II to pursue the ideas of Vannevar Bush to build a robust science infrastructure that would ensure that the United States was at the forefront of research and development. Our government is now making the decision to seriously diminish the public sector aspect of that infrastructure, literally shutting down organizations and institutions built over decades. Perhaps the private sector can and will pick up the slack - but people need to understand exactly what is being dismantled and ensure their thoughts and perspectives are known by the politicians that represent them. Decisions are being made about the future of our scientific institutions that will impact our society literally for decades - I hope this post will help you understand the implications of the decisions regarding NOAA and its weather science work.