Noaa workforce shrinks by 3,000 as winter storm risks mount

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has lost roughly 20% of its staff since January 2025, according to workforce data from the US office of personnel management. This reduction of more than 3,000 positions comes as the agency prepares for a potentially historic El Niño winter, a period characterized by warmer equatorial sea surface temperatures that typically drive extreme weather across the United States.

The staffing decline has already affected operational capacity. The National Weather Service, a component of Noaa, reported that hundreds of technical positions remain vacant across its 122 forecast offices. Weather stations have delayed data collection and cut operating hours. The agency analyzed and collected 6.3 billion observations each day before the cuts, but now operates with a deficit of 2,500 employees despite hiring 525 new staff members this year.

Specific departments have experienced sharper losses. The public affairs team was reduced by half. Information technology management workers, who support forecasting and data infrastructure, saw a 27% reduction. The agency added only 40 meteorologists between January and August 2026, leaving a gap in coverage as autumn approaches. A government accountability office report found that staffing and funding cuts led to inadequate multilingual weather alerts, placing 26 million people at higher risk during emergencies.

The financial impact extends beyond personnel. The Trump administration terminated dozens of grants, resulting in a loss of more than $28 million in funding for states, cities, non-profits, and universities. Grant Witness, an organization that tracks federal science grants, calculated that climate research grants in fiscal year 2026 are 37% lower than the average from 2021 to 2024. The administration has also proposed a 26% budget cut for Noaa next year, amounting to $1.6 billion, which would further strain the agency's resources.

Experts warn that these reductions limit the agency's ability to forecast and respond to extreme weather. Tom Di Liberto, a former Noaa climate scientist and current media director at Climate Central, noted that the system has not been fully tested since the cuts began. He said, "Whether we as a country can handle the kind of coast-to-coast extremes that could potentially happen this winter is a big question." The current El Niño is expected to strengthen through the northern hemisphere's winter, potentially raising sea levels in California by up to a foot and increasing the risk of storms, landslides, and flash floods.

The agency's reduced capacity also affects global monitoring efforts. Noaa satellites and data are used by forecasters worldwide to track severe weather in Europe and monitor deforestation in the Amazon. This year, the agency plans to deploy only a handful of unmanned watercraft into the Pacific for data collection, compared to the planes, weather balloons, and research ships used during the last strong El Niño a decade ago. Funding for the Biogeochemical-Argo float project, which monitors the oceans using autonomous robots, expires at the end of October.

Rick Spinrad, the Noaa administrator during the Biden administration, identified staffing, operations, and public engagement as the top concerns for the agency. He said, "We are more capable than we have been in the past because of the developments in the technology, the satellites that were flying, the observing systems that we've put in place. But everything that this administration is doing suggests that we cannot and will not sustain those capabilities." Noaa and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, did not return requests for comment before publication.