The crippling of forecasting: John Morales on severe cuts to NOAA’s budget as hurricane season carries on

^{This is an Op-Ed.}

The hits just keep on coming.

Hurricane specialists like me would like to focus exclusively on the meteorological aspects of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, which is still forecast to be above normal. But the unrelenting assault by the government on the storm monitoring and forecasting apparatus is too alarming to ignore. 

You’ve already watched and read about my concerns of the increasing risk for forecast errors heading into an active season. Data-loss worries since that viral moment have only worsened, with news of the loss of Saildrone information. These unmanned floating vehicles had been penetrating hurricanes to deliver valuable meteorological data from inside storms—but won’t in 2025.

Then, just last week, we were shocked to hear of the sudden impending shutoff of invaluable microwave sensor data from NOAA and Department of Defense satellites. These scans provide the best detail and represent about 50 percent of all available satellite microwave data in the Atlantic. Without them, our ability to detect a storm’s rapid intensification in the middle of the night is limited.

Thanks to the outcry from the scientific community, including my very vocal protest, the cutoff date was delayed. But the microwave scans still won’t be available for the heart of hurricane season, which begins August 1.

Now this week, the alarming details of the White House’s proposed fiscal year budget for NOAA emerged. In addition to the massive cutbacks that have already been implemented at the National Weather Service, the Trump administration also intends to gut the research offices and weather labs across several branches of the agency.

This comes as no surprise, because there was a blueprint in place before Donald J. Trump got elected: NOAA was to be dismembered under the new administration. The agency, according to the Heritage Foundation, is a climate scaremonger.

But, trust me, as far as alarming happenings brought on by the changing climate, you haven’t seen anything yet! We’re blowing past 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming since the pre-industrial era, on our way to 2, 3, maybe even 4 degrees by the end of this century.

A National Weather Service with insufficient data and an exhausted and demoralized staff will struggle to keep up with the documented increases in climate-fueled weather extremes. The next steps, if enacted as part of Trump’s 2026 budget proposal, will erode our scientific understanding of the very storms that produce the most dangerous weather.

NOAA’s office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would disappear. Even if some of its laboratories and centers survive, they’re expected to be moved to different NOAA departments, with an overall reduction of 75 percent in the office’s budget.

Why is OAR important?

The National Severe Storms Laboratory is in it. Its mission, like many of these agencies, is to save lives and property by “working to improve the lead time and accuracy of severe weather warnings and forecasts.” Sounds key.

The Air Resources Laboratory studies the lower atmosphere to protect people, the environment, and commercial activities with applications that impact emergency response, homeland security, air quality, commerce and transportation. Check.

And then there’s the Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory here in Miami. This laboratory studies oceans and human health, how the ocean changes over time and its relation to climate, and, importantly, hurricanes. It includes the Hurricane Research Division, which developed the first model to skillfully predict tropical cyclone intensities and continues to study the physics of hurricanes and how to improve forecasting. It improved our ability to predict rapid intensification cycles in tropical storms. And it proved that hurricane winds measured remotely by an instrument onboard aircraft reconnaissance missions were accurate.

Yup, I want to know about these things.

It took decades of research and innovation to reach the level of accuracy in hurricane forecasting attained prior to January 20, 2025. The National Hurricane Center made record-accurate track forecasts in 2024.

I wonder if years from now we’ll look back at 2024 as the high-water mark.