The Trump administration is considering terminating leases for properties housing vital weather service operations and other fisheries operations, according to , a former official of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, , a former deputy director of NOAA's national marine fisheries services, as well as a current NOAA contractor who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing their job. One of the potential lease terminations includes a key weather forecasting center in .
NOAA has historically employed about 12,000 staff who work on a range of issues from climate change to managing the nation's multibillion-dollar commercial fisheries. The agency monitors and forecasts extreme weather, including hurricanes and floods, and provides the data that feeds local TV meteorologists' forecasts and the weather apps on your phone.
The agency is also terminating at least four expert advisory committees, according to an email that NPR obtained from the current NOAA contractor. The email details the termination of the Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space, Climate Services Advisory Committee, Marine and Coastal Area-based Management Advisory Committee and the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee.
That NOAA contractor also told NPR that the potential closure of the Maryland weather forecasting facility is especially concerning. "Anything that is getting canceled with the weather program is a terrible idea," the contractor says. "Loss of an entire facility would hamper our ability to do our jobs, predict the weather properly, help protect people and property."
McLean says if lease terminations happen, that would be "remarkably stupid," and that a closure in Maryland could mean the agency would have trouble providing accurate forecasts that serve a wide swath of people from mariners to pilots.鈥� McLean says the products at the College Park facility "are distributed to the weather forecast offices across the country."
NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce. Neither agency responded to NPR's requests for comment. A White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record to the press said the administration is reevaluating the lease terms but is not closing the buildings.
"Someone is sitting at an absolutely unlearned level determining what contracts to end," says McLean, who served across several previous administrations. He says in his conversations with current NOAA employees there's confusion about what is happening that is "destabilizing."
The began firing at least 800 workers 鈥� part of government-wide layoffs ordered by the Trump administration to government.
The terminations included staff at the National Weather Service, which is tasked with generating weather forecasts that millions of people in the U.S. rely on.
the White House sent a memo to federal agency directors ordering them to prepare plans for "large-scale reductions in force" by March 13, though muddled by the administration's frequent policy changes, as well as ongoing legal and administrative procedures.
"Tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hard-working American citizens," the memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Office of Personnel Management acting Director Charles Ezell states.
It calls the federal government "bloated" and "corrupt."
The memo orders agency directors to lay off large numbers of staff, save money, and get rid of real estate, all while increasing productivity and providing "better service for the American people."
As details on the cuts emerged at locations across the country, current and former workers at NOAA said the cuts threatened key public services, from weather forecasts to wildlife management.
"It befuddles me to see how unplugging and disassembling rather intricate services that the nation has been provided by this federal agency and others is really making America great again," McLean says. "We are going backwards."
In the Bay Area, cuts hit already strained weather forecasters聽
Member station reported that at least three people at the National Weather Service's Bay Area office were fired, according to Dalton Behringer, the office's union steward for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. The three employees 鈥� a meteorologist, an administrative support assistant and a facilities technician 鈥� were probationary, a distinction indicating they were relatively new to the agency or their current role. They received emails notifying them of their termination before their supervisors were aware, according to Behringer.
Behringer, a meteorologist for the Bay Area office, spoke to KQED after hours in his union capacity.
The Bay Area NWS office, which serves more than 8 million residents across 11 counties in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions, was already down one meteorologist, Behringer said. It will now operate with a staff of 22, with 20% of the remaining employees eligible for retirement.
The work of the fired employees "is going to get spread to those of us who are already overworked, and we're understaffed," he said.
In Florida, fears over hurricane forecasting聽
Member station reported that nearly two dozen scientists based at NOAA's Virginia Key offices in Miami were laid off last Thursday, according to a NOAA biologist and a source who worked closely with the agency. Both spoke on the condition of requested anonymity out of fear of losing their job or having funding cut.
They say the cuts are a direct hit to hurricane research and fisheries management vital to protecting U.S. shores.
They confirmed about 16 fired scientists worked in fisheries and a half dozen on hurricane modeling and forecasting.
One of those fired was Andy Hazelton, a meteorologist who worked on improving hurricane forecasts.
He flew repeated missions aboard NOAA's hurricane hunter planes and focused his research on one of the most pressing concerns: hurricanes that intensify suddenly, giving little warning to the public and emergency managers.
Hazelton, who has four young kids, said working for NOAA had been a lifelong goal.
He said he grew up in areas in Central Florida where he's experienced hurricanes, "so doing modeling and working for NOAA was really a dream."
At the Virginia Key lab, he helped develop a next-generation hurricane forecasting model as part of a partnership between NOAA and the University of Miami.
The research done by Hazelton and others has helped to dramatically improve hurricane forecasts in a short amount of time. The latest model Hazelton worked on improved track forecasts by 8% and intensity forecasts by 10%, . That's allowing forecasters to better understand when might explode and make landfalls more lethal.
With the cuts to NOAA, that progress is threatened across the agency, says Rick Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator under the Biden administration.
"Any of the progress that has been made over the last several years, including in reducing the errors in the track forecast of hurricanes, reducing the errors in the intensity forecast, I think it's safe to say that that will be compromised," he says.
In Seattle, NOAA cuts include an orca-saving employee聽
Hanna Miller was on vacation in Hawaii when she opened her work email and learned that she no longer had a job.
Until last Thursday, she was a natural resource specialist with NOAA, focused on protecting whales from oil spills, ship strikes and fishing gear.
"The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency's current needs," the email from Vice Adm. Nancy Hann, deputy undersecretary for operations, read.
"[I] just read it and had enough time to read it and share it with my personal email before I got locked out of my work account," Miller told. "I was just really devastated."
Miller was awarded employee of the year for NOAA Fisheries in the western United States in 2023, and in March 2024, she was promoted. Miller was a week and a half from completing her yearlong post-promotion probation when she was fired.
In 2022, Miller helped a multiagency team make sure endangered orcas didn't swim into diesel fuel belching out of the sunken Aleutian Isle fishing boat off Washington's San Juan Island.
"I was on call for 42 days, tracking them every second that I was awake to make sure that they didn't go through [the oil spill]," Miller said.
"Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters," NOAA spokesperson James Miller emailed in response to a KUOW interview and information request.
"Public servants are people who are very dedicated to protecting, well, in my case, protecting species and the ocean," Miller said. "We could have taken higher-paying jobs in other fields, but we've chosen these ones because we care."
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