BalancedWx Special: Reports that Trump Administration plans massive cuts to NOAA
Intent to eliminate NOAA Research and move space weather prediction to DHS
There have been multiple reports today that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) FY2026 Presidential budget passback document includes a more than 25% cut to the budget of NOAA, including massive cuts to its climate and weather research budgets. Reports from Science, E&E News, Axios and CNN indicate that part of these cuts include elimination of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), more commonly known as NOAA Research.
To understand the potential implications of this, it is important to understand the structure of NOAA as a federal bureau. NOAA is made up of six individual line offices:
National Weather Service (NWS)
National Ocean Service (NOS)
National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS)
Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO)
Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
Each of the first four line offices has specific operational or regulatory missions and responsibilities; as an obvious example, NWS has the responsibility to provide weather and water warnings and forecasts for the country. The latter two line offices, OMAO and OAR, can be thought of more as entities that cross-cut the other four line offices. OMAO operates the aviation and marine fleets for NOAA, while OAR conducts research in support of and in partnership with the four operational line offices and the broader scientific community.
While NOAA receives an overall budget appropriation from Congress, the appropriation is broken down with specific amounts going to each of these line offices. The Science article indicates that the administration’s planned FY2026 budget request for OAR is $171M, which is more than $500M below what was appropriated in FY2024, so approximately a 75% decrease. “At this funding level, OAR is eliminated as a line office,” Science reports the budget document states, with the remaining OAR funding and programs absorbed into other line offices.
As with any proposed significant changes with something as complex as the federal government, we really need to know the details of what is planned to fully understand the potential implications, and even if the budget passback document were publicly available, it likely does not provide the needed level of detail. Still, based on the media reports regarding the passback there are some clear high level impacts and implications that can be gleaned and discussed:
Elimination of all NOAA Research labs and all of the associated cooperative institutes. As I discussed in an article earlier this week about planned cuts to NOAA’s cooperative institute at Princeton University, OAR operates multiple federal labs across the country, with affiliated cooperative institutes at partner universities. The passback appears to eliminate this entire structure. (Note: the CNN article incorrectly states that the Meteorological Development Lab (MDL) is part of the NOAA Research lab structure; in fact, MDL is part of the National Weather Service.)
The 75% budget cut to OAR would be focused on climate, with essentially elimination of all climate change related programs. Given the termination of OAR and all of the NOAA Research labs, the remaining funded NOAA Research functions - Axios specifically mentions tornado, weather and ocean observation research - would be rolled into other remaining line offices. For example, I would speculate that the severe weather research programs at the National Severe Storms Lab (NSSL) could be moved into the NWS Storm Prediction Center (SPC).
The Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) would be moved from NOAA to the Department of Homeland Security.
NASA’s role in the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program would be terminated, and the planned operational capacity for the next planned GOES satellite, GeoXO, would be dramatically reduced.
NOAA Sea Grant would be eliminated. Sea Grant is a community based research, outreach and education program located in coastal communities around the country. As stated on their webpage, “for over 50 years, the National Sea Grant College Program has supported coastal, marine and Great Lakes communities through research, extension and education.” Elimination of the Sea Grant program has been proposed by prior administrations, but always rejected by Congress.
NOAA’s competitive climate research grants program would be eliminated, resulting in the loss of about $70 million a year to academic researchers.
Funding for NOAA’s regional climate centers (RCCs) would be eliminated. RCCs provide tremendous value-added climate services to many individual and private sector users that will be lost.
In my opinion, it is impossible to adequately express what a massive - mostly negative, of course - impact these outlined changes would have on the scientific community and society as a whole. Any one of the impacts described in the above bullets would be substantial; taken as a whole, this list of impacts is almost unimaginable to me as someone with more than 35 years of experience in this community.
I will focus briefly on one aspect I am very familiar with. Given the immense benefits I have witnessed them provide over the decades, it is inconceivable to me that we would intentionally destroy the incredible infrastructure of national laboratories and cooperative institutes that has been built by NOAA over the decades. While there could be some small benefits in aligning research and operational priorities by placing the remaining research functions into their appropriate operational line offices, these benefits are completely outweighed by the loss of independent research entities focused every day on things like severe thunderstorms, numerical weather prediction, hurricanes, Great Lakes environmental and marine issues…I could go on, but hopefully the message is clear. Any small positives these changes might bring would, in my opinion, be dwarfed by the negative impacts.
I also would be remiss if I did not make a specific mention of Sea Grant. Sea Grant is a program that many people around the country are unfamiliar with. While I worked at NSSL, I was lucky enough to be part of a Sea Grant severe weather research and education program supported by VORTEX-Southeast, and as part of this project I became much more familiar with the work Sea Grant does. Sea Grant extension scientists are located in communities around the country, and directly transition NOAA research results into tangible education and mitigation projects that benefit society. Per a recent study cited on Sea Grant’s webpage, in 2023, Sea Grant’s work resulted in $828.3M of societal economic benefit against a budget of $94M. Sea Grant has taken nearly 60 years to build their incredible capacity to help communities manage and utilize their natural resources, and better prepare for and mitigate natural disasters. It would be tragic to throw that away.
It is important to recognize that all of what is outlined above are of course still plans and draft budgets. Axios reported that House Science Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren said she will "do everything I can to stand in the way of this idiotic plan." There have been other dramatic presidential budget proposals affecting NOAA during my recently ended career with the agency, most of which did not come to fruition because they were not enacted by Congress. However, what is different today is that the current administration has made clear their intent to execute budget appropriations based on administration priorities, using techniques such as impoundment and spending freezes to take control of spending.
Furthermore, all federal agencies are currently in the process of developing reduction-in-force (RIF) and reorganization plans in response to an Office of Management and Budget directive. These RIF and reorganization plans are due next week, and it seems likely that the plans will be in alignment with this reported budget proposal. In fact, CNN is reporting that even though the budget passback document is for FY2026, the administration plans to begin implementation of these priorities, including elimination of OAR, “immediately.” Given what the administration has done with other agencies, e.g., USAID, such statements of intent must be taken seriously.
My ultimate goal with Balanced Weather is to provide reasonable, rational weather information that will help people make better decisions. In my opinion, the plans outlined above will negatively impact mine and my colleagues’ ability to provide that sort of information, and it is my responsibility to clearly say that. I will continue to provide updates about all of this as we learn more, and I hope that you will use the comments section to ask any questions and share any perspectives you may have.