NOAA budget reductions jeopardize hurricane forecasting accuracy

With towns and cities in the southeastern United States still reeling from hurricanes that hit last year, scientists are now releasing their forecasts for what could unfold in the hurricane season that starts in less than two months. Colorado State University predicts nine hurricanes in 2025, four of which could spin into major strength, while AccuWeather forecasts up to 10. Both predict an above-average season similar to last year’s, which produced monster storms like Helene. That hurricane inundated swaths of the U.S., killing 249 people and causing $79 billion in damage across seven states.

The Trump administration’s slashing of jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is coming at a dangerous time, experts say, as the agency generates a stream of data essential to creating hurricane forecasting models. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has eliminated hundreds of positions at NOAA as part of Musk’s stated aim of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget. Last week, news broke that the administration proposed cutting NOAA’s overall budget by 25 percent, with plans to eliminate funding for the agency’s research arm. 

NOAA and its various divisions, like the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, collect and process the data that weather apps like AccuWeather use for their daily forecasts. Hurricane forecasters also rely on data from various government-owned instruments: real-time measurements of ocean temperatures from a network of buoys and satellites, and wind speeds from weather balloons. Those readings help scientists predict what the conditions leading up to hurricane season might say about the number of storms that could arrive this summer and their potential intensity.

All those NOAA instruments require people to maintain them and others to process the data. Though Klotzbach says he hasn’t had any issues accessing the data when running his seasonal forecast model, scientists like him are worried that losing those agency staffers to cost-cutting efforts will disrupt the stream of information just as hurricane season is getting going. The National Weather Service is already reducing the number of weather balloon launches. And on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the National Weather Service is preparing for fewer forecast updates due to severe shortages of meteorologists and other employees. (The National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center did not return requests to comment for this story.)

The seasonal forecasts now help raise awareness in hurricane hotspots like the Gulf Coast, said Xubin Zeng, director of the Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center at the University of Arizona. However, as the start of hurricane season approaches on June 1 and NOAA loses staff, researchers are worried that their shorter-term forecasts-the ones that alert the public to immediate dangers—could suffer, a result that would endanger American lives. 

“Now we are nervous about whether those data will be provided — and will be provided on time — from NOAA,” Zeng said. “We are thinking about what kind of backup plans we need for our early-June prediction.”

To make their predictions, researchers are looking in particular at three main ingredients that hurricanes need to grow large and strong: a hot ocean that acts as fuel, high humidity, and low vertical wind shear — basically, a lack of winds that usually break up a storm. 

Getting that complete picture is critical because hurricanes churn the ocean. Their winds push away the top layer of water, and deeper water rushes up to fill the void. If deeper water is colder, it can mix upward to cool the surface waters, removing the fuel that hurricanes feed on. By contrast, warmer waters from the deep might mix toward the surface, providing more storm fuel. Forecasters are predicting an above-average season this year because the Atlantic is already several degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual.

Buoys provide a snapshot of this dynamic, measuring ocean temperatures, both for the conditions that give rise to hurricanes and those that sustain them. “The buoys are critical for getting not only what’s going on with the ocean surface, but what’s going on deeper down in the ocean,” said Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist who oversees Colorado State University’s seasonal hurricane forecast. 

They also require maintenance if their instruments break. If forecasters lose access to that data, they can’t accurately predict a hurricane’s strength and where it will make landfall: They might alert local authorities that an incoming storm will be a Category 3, only for it to spin up into a much more dangerous Category 5. 

This is known as rapid intensification, an increase in sustained wind speeds by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours. Last October, Hurricane Milton jumped from 90 mph in a day before slamming into Florida. These rapid intensification events are happening much more frequently thanks to global warming heating the oceans, and researchers are getting better at predicting them, thanks in no small part to NOAA’s data. 

Once a hurricane arrives, NOAA scrambles aircraft to take still more measurements, which helps improve forecasts of future storms. If Congress approves the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the agency, the Hurricane Research Division, which contributes crews to these “hurricane hunter” aircraft, would be shut down, according to Rick Spinrad, a former NOAA administrator. “Without the researchers being part of those flights,” Spinrad said, “the data they collect and contribute won’t be there anymore, so the hurricane hunter efficiency goes down.”

While the Trump administration is slashing NOAA’s budget and staff ostensibly to save money, the agency saves Americans six dollars for every dollar invested in the agency, according to Justin Mankin, director of the Climate Modeling and Impacts Group at Dartmouth College. An accurate forecast can, for instance, help communities better prepare for extreme weather and mitigate any damage. Cutting jobs at NOAA, Mankin suspects, might be a step toward turning it into a for-profit entity, instead of providing free data to hurricane researchers and the public. 

“The institutions that DOGE is taking apart have some of the highest credibility and return on investment of any in the government,” Mankin said. “The perverse thing that seems to be happening here is that this is about a systematic degradation of the quality of the science coming out of these institutions and about instilling a loss of confidence.” 

https://grist.org/climate/hurricane-season-forecast-doge-slashes-noaa-jobs/