BalancedWx Special: OMB Releases FY2026 Budget (Updated 5/31 am)
Massive implications for weather and water science and disaster management
Update 10 am CT Sat 5/30: I have made a few updates to my post - thanks to several readers for providing some additional information and context that I missed or didn’t have time to put in the original post last night. I have shown where I have made updates by using italics.
It’s Friday evening, and we have another release of negativity from the Trump Administration related to science. Tonight it is the release by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the official FY2026 Presidential proposed budget. We had a preview of what this was going to look like for NOAA because of the “passback” FY2026 budget document that OMB sent to NOAA for input back in April. That document was OMB’s preliminary budget plan and guidance that they were providing to NOAA and the Department of Commerce for leadership to provide input and feedback back to OMB. Today’s document from OMB is the “final” version of the administration’s proposed budget for FY2026, not just for NOAA obviously, but for the entire executive branch.
As I wrote in my Substack article about the passback document back in April, in prior administrations the release of the President’s Budget (PresBud) was really just the opening act in a long governmental interaction between the executive and legislative branches that would end with a final budget, in recent years typically through a continuing resolution passed by Congress and signed by the President sometime well into the fiscal year in question. Today’s PresBud release has much bigger implications, though, as the current Trump Administration has made it clear that they intend to manage operations of the executive branch based on the priorities of the administration as outlined in their budget documents, not based upon what funding has been appropriated by Congress. As was discussed in this E&E News article by Politico, the administration has been provided even greater flexibility to be able to do this by the FY2025 Continuing Resolution which has very little specific guidance to the administration, allowing it to move and execute funding as it sees fit.
With all that in mind, while the budget document released today does not go into the level of detail with regard to priorities as the passback budget document did, overall what we see today is extremely consistent with what was in the passback for NOAA. The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR, or NOAA Research) is eliminated. In fact, it’s almost as if it never existed in the eyes of the administration. NOAA has six line offices currently, and the document correctly states “NOAA executes programs and activities to achieve its mission through six line activities.” However, when it lists the line offices it completely leaves out OAR and instead lists “Mission Support” as the sixth line activity. The only place OAR appears in the document is in the budget tables where the FY24 and FY25 appropriations are listed, and then just dashes are shown for FY2026.
Meanwhile, for the National Weather Service, I have seen some social media comments expressing surprise (and maybe some hope) that there appears to be a budget increase for NWS in this proposal. However, as I talked about in my original article on the passback, based on that document the administration does plan to keep a few budgetary lines and/or programs from OAR and roll them into other line offices. Of the OAR budget lines listed in the passback to be preserved, three of them would seem the most likely to be rolled into NWS: US Weather Research Program, Tornado/Phased Array Radar, and Joint Technology Transfer Initiative. The total for those three programs based on the FY24 appropriation is $72M; the increase for NWS in this FY26 budget document is $71M. I think it is very safe to assume that the increase in the budget number for NWS in today’s PresBud is due to those three budget lines being moved from OAR to NWS with the demise of OAR as a NOAA line office.
I am not going to rehash in detail all of what I have written about the potential implications that this budget would have on the atmospheric science community and society in general. You can read my initial article about the passback implications here and additional thoughts here. Needless to say, the total elimination of NOAA Research and its infrastructure of national labs and university affiliated cooperative institutes would have a devastating impact on weather and climate research and the capacity of NOAA/NWS to implement initiatives to improve forecast and warning services.
Furthermore, the FY26 budget document outlines anticipated federal full time employee numbers for each bureau, and it shows NOAA going from 11,266 federal employees this year to an anticipated number of 9,901 in 2026, a decrease of 1,365 or 12%. I am assuming based on earlier reporting that the FY25 number was at the start of the year, and that a significant part of that 12% reduction has already transpired from the early retirement/buyout earlier this spring. Of course, additional reductions would occur with the elimination of OAR as a line office. Regardless, these numbers combined with the budgetary proposals would seem to indicate little room for significant hiring within NOAA in FY26, including in the NWS which has been dealing with significant staffing issues as I have talked about in other posts.
Obviously, NOAA is not the only federal entity involved in the weather science world. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is another key player in science research in general, and I talked in an article a few weeks ago about the important role it plays in the meteorological community.
Overall, NSF fares even worse than NOAA, with a 55% cut in its total budget. Geosciences, the directorate under which most atmospheric science research is funded, has a 63% cut in the proposed FY26 PresBud. Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, another directorate of interest to the weather community, is cut 68%. While the specifics of what this would mean to meteorological research is uncertain, the NCAR specific budget document shows a 40% cut to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). In an email to staff late yesterday, the NCAR Director indicated that leadership is making contingency plans for a 40% cut as part of its budget planning. He noted that even with a flat budget for FY25, NCAR might have to start making staffing and program reductions before the end of this fiscal year in September to start accounting for a 40% cut in 2026. What this would mean for NCAR affiliated programs like the University Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and Unidata are unclear.
NASA also posted their technical budget detail document on their website. It reflects a 50% cut to the Earth Sciences budget line, which is where most of NASA’s atmospheric science and climate related research is funded. To give you some perspective on what is funded from this directorate and being cut by 50%, this is taken from the budget document: The Earth Science Research program addresses complex Earth science questions in pursuit of a comprehensive understanding of the complex Earth system (Atmosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, Geosphere, and Hydrosphere). By linking the most advanced satellite observations of Earth with research on these systems and interdisciplinary connections between them, the Earth science program advances knowledge about the Earth system and develops technologies that benefit multiple stakeholders, including natural resource managers, disaster responders, academia, and U.S. industry.
Obviously, there is not a lot of positive news with any of this budget proposal. I would stress again, though, that even though the administration appears to be moving forward with these plans, Congress does still play a key role in the appropriations process. For those people concerned about the potential impacts of the administration’s planned budget, letting your Congressional representation know of your concerns is still worthwhile.
I want to finish by sharing some bigger picture thoughts that I was already trying to synthesize based on some news stories from the last couple of days, starting by talking about an agency I have not really discussed in prior posts: the United States Geological Survey or USGS. Many people first think about USGS in relation to earthquakes and volcanoes, but USGS also plays a huge role in water monitoring in the United States. The NWS has the responsibility for flood forecasts and warnings, but most of the federal responsibility for the observing networks that monitor river and stream stages and flow rests with other agencies, and USGS is a primary agency for that responsibility (along with the US Army Corps of Engineers).
USGS has water science centers around the country that oversee and maintain the hydrologic observing networks around the nation. A Wisconsin Examiner article from Thursday about a USGS field office in Rice Lake, WI being slated for closure is one of many media articles in recent weeks about USGS water science centers and field offices being planned for closure. The FY26 budget has an overall planned cut for the USGS of approximately 30% per today’s OMB document. What exactly that means for stream gage networks and river monitoring is uncertain - but again, it is likely not positive.
Meanwhile, NBC News released a story today about how the Department of Homeland Security is trying to keep FEMA afloat as we enter hurricane season. I have already written in an earlier post about my concerns about the emergency management structure of the country given the administration’s plans for FEMA. This NBC News reporting makes it clear that there are serious short term concerns about FEMA’s ability to meet its mission, which correlates with other similar reports I have seen and heard recently. For example, on BlueSky Dr. Samantha Montano, a noted expert in emergency management, posted yesterday:
I bring USGS and FEMA into this conversation to make the point that the infrastructure that tries to keep Americans safe from natural disaster - and help them recover when natural disaster unfortunately occurs - is not about any single federal agency or any single scientific or administrative discipline. It is about an entire infrastructure of integrated entities at all levels of government that have to work together in an organized fashion - and when part of that infrastructure is weakened, it will be under growing strain and danger of collapse. The federal part of that infrastructure - in many ways, the foundational aspect of that infrastructure - is clearly feeling that strain right now.
Obviously, there is a lot of focus right now on hurricane season given its start on Sunday, and the ability of federal agencies such as NOAA and FEMA to meet their mission as we enter that precarious time of year. For example, my colleague Michael Lowry on BlueSky yesterday said:
I am, of course, worried about hurricane season too - but really my worries are larger and deeper than that. I have been thinking a lot lately about what would happen if a major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake were to happen in the Pacific Northwest in the next few months. Unlike a hurricane, this would be an event that would strike without warning. In the literal first few minutes after the event, immediate and seamless coordination would have to happen between the NWS, USGS, FEMA and a whole host of federal, state and local agencies to manage the massive and urgent threats posed by tsunami, landslides, dam breaks - not to mention the actual direct earthquake impacts.
Emergency management officials already recognize the immense danger such a scenario presents, know it will happen at some point, and routinely exercise to try to maintain some level of readiness for a Cascadia earthquake. Nature does not know or care that we have decided that now is the time that we are going to intentionally reduce the capacity of the federal agencies that are tasked with helping us deal with such an event. We can only hope that the random timing with which these events happen does not randomly “choose” now - because if we do not think we are in a position to handle an event we can anticipate such as a hurricane, what will be the result of a massive “surprise” disaster?