Donald Trump and DOGE Are Threatening America’s Weather Forecasting

Donald Trump’s administration has engaged in persistent mass firings over the past three months — affecting various critical agencies and putting their future in question. One agency that has been significantly impacted is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Within NOAA, the National Weather Service has been thrown into turmoil, and experts argue this could threaten the reliability of America’s weather forecasting system.

The weather app you use? It almost certainly relies on the observational data that NOAA collects from dozens of doppler radars across the U.S., geostationary satellites, its weather balloon network, surface stations, buoys out in the ocean and more. If NOAA can’t operate at its usual levels, the forecasts you get from that app could become a lot less accurate.

These weather forecasts are critical for the transportation industry and many other industries. It’s also important to be able to accurately predict the weather when severe weather events threaten communities across the nation.

“You’re talking about threats to life and property. This is a place where you don’t want to make mistakes,” says David Stensrud, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State. 

NOAA and the National Weather Service have been disrupted by the Trump administration in various ways, and things may continue to get worse as firings and budget cuts continue. Weather balloon launches are being reduced across the country, some technology updates are on hold, there are concerns about maintaining the tornado and hurricane warning systems, and more. Recently, the administration released a budget that would massively cut weather and climate research. 

“Weather balloons are not being launched at all of these sites due to staffing cuts,” Stensrud says. “Those go into our operational weather prediction models, and they’re important contributors to those models. The loss of [weather balloons] is going to decrease forecast skill. Over time, the fear is that forecasts will not be as good as they were before.”

Richard Rood, a professor emeritus of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan, says the balloon measurements are “surprisingly important.”

“They can look at the [balloon measurements] and see if the model has missed some extreme local event,” Rood says. “We’ve lost data that often helps us understand a system that the global model is not able to resolve.”

One significant problem is the loss of human forecasters, Rood says, because they’re able to look at these models and use their expertise to interpret what may be coming in the near future. If there are fewer of them working in the federal government, things could get missed.

“The potential for missing a low-probability, high-risk event is increasing, and you’re increasing the fragmentation of an already fragmented organization, which I think will have consequences,” Rood says.

Stensrud says that NOAA and other agencies could certainly be more effective, but the way that Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is going about its staffing and budget cuts doesn’t appear to be well thought-out. Recent polling indicates that many Americans believe Trump and DOGE are rushing this process. 

“Every agency can become more efficient, but that’s usually something that takes time to think through,” says Stensrud. “It’s not something that happens, wisely, in a matter of days.”

Thanks to the effects of climate change, severe weather events are becoming more common every year. Hurricanes, flooding, heat waves, wildfires, and more pose an increasingly severe threat to human life, and people need to be warned about them as early as possible. 

“When severe weather happens, offices will bring in a lot of staff to manage all that has to happen to get warnings out to the public,” Stensrud says. “When staff is at minimum levels, you’re putting a lot of stress on those people.”

Furthermore, it’s not clear that the work DOGE is doing will in any way reduce government spending — one of its stated goals. The entire National Weather Service has a budget of around $1.5 billion, and the work the agency does saves the country tens of billions of dollars. 

“The U.S. spends about a dollar out of every $100 investing in non-defense science. Some of that’s NOAA,” Stensrud says. “Some of that’s the National Science Foundation. Some of that’s the [National Institutes of Health]. It’s not a very big investment.”

It appears the weather forecasting models will continue to operate relatively effectively for now, but Rood says they could begin to degrade before the year is over. If things continue to get worse for these agencies, the risks increase. 

Next time you get unexpectedly caught in the rain, you can thank DOGE.