Noaa workforce drops 3,000 as super El Niño builds

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is facing a historic El Niño event with a workforce that is roughly 20% smaller than it was eighteen months ago. Former officials and scientists argue that this reduction has compromised the agency's capacity to forecast and respond to extreme weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere.

Since President Donald Trump began his second term, the agency has executed deep cuts to staff, contracts, and research infrastructure. Data from the Office of Personnel Management, updated in August, indicates that Noaa lost more than 3,000 employees between January 2025 and the end of the summer. This represents the largest decline in the agency's headcount over the last decade. The agency hired only 525 new staff members during that same period, leaving a net deficit of approximately 2,500 positions.

The impact is visible across the agency's operational divisions. The public affairs team was cut by half, while information technology management staff decreased by 27%. More than 500 science positions were eliminated, compared to just 46 new hires in those roles. Meteorologists and meteorology technicians, who form the backbone of the National Weather Service, are down about 10% heading into the autumn season. Hundreds of technical and meteorological jobs remain unfilled across the service's 122 forecast offices.

Operational delays have already emerged in key areas. Weather balloon launches in the Great Plains have been limited, reducing preparation time for tornado tracking. In rural Alaska, where floods displaced more than 1,500 people earlier this year, warnings to communities were restricted due to staffing shortages. The Government Accountability Office reported that the weather service failed to provide adequate multilingual alerts because of these cuts, placing 26 million people at higher risk.

Financial support for research has also contracted. Grant Witness, a group that tracks federal science funding, reported that dozens of terminated grants represent over $28 million in lost funding for states, cities, nonprofits, and universities. The number of grant awards in fiscal year 2026 is 37% below the average recorded between 2021 and 2024. The administration has proposed cutting $1.6 billion, or 26%, from Noaa's budget for the next fiscal year, though some of these reductions may not survive the legislative process.

The current El Niño is characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures along the equator. It is expected to strengthen through winter, potentially lifting sea levels in California by up to a foot and increasing the risk of landslides and flash floods in the American west. Tom Di Liberto, a former Noaa climate scientist and current media director at Climate Central, stated that the system has not been fully tested since the cuts began. He described the country's ability to handle coast-to-coast extremes as a major unknown.

Noaa has also scaled back its observational assets. During the last strong El Niño event a decade ago, the agency deployed planes, weather balloons, unmanned aircraft, and a research ship into the Pacific. This year, only a handful of unmanned watercraft are being deployed. The administration has removed some ocean monitoring systems and cut roughly $6 billion from an investment in weather satellites. Rick Spinrad, who led the agency under President Joe Biden, noted that current capabilities are strong due to past investment, but said the administration's actions suggest those capabilities will not be sustained. Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment before publication.