Trump administration begins to roll out proposals to cut NOAA programs, including ocean labs and Sea Grant

By SCOTT DANCE/The Washington Post

A new Trump proposal would eliminate nearly all National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration laboratories focused on studying the world’s weather, climate and oceans and would slash much of the agency’s budget — part of what the White House document describes as an effort to sever all “climate-related programs” from the agency.

Documents detailing the administration’s proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, would cut NOAA’s $6.1 billion budget by 27 percent overall, while effectively eliminating a research branch of the agency whose mission is to improve weather and climate forecasts, natural disaster warnings and otherwise improve understanding of the natural world.

The programs are “misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people,” the document says.

With the plan, the Trump administration significantly accelerated its attacks on climate science, while also opening itself up to further criticism that it is handicapping the country’s ability to protect itself from natural disasters by cutting crucial and popular weather forecasting programs.

If enacted, Democrats and science advocates argue the plan would make weather forecasts less accurate and would endanger communities vulnerable to extreme weather.

The budget proposal includes flat funding for the National Weather Service, while also adding to its responsibilities by transferring some weather research from NOAA, its parent agency, into the weather service. It would cut research focused on seasonal climate trends that is vital to meteorologists’ ability to forecast disasters like wildfire and tornado outbreaks or droughts.

“NOAA’s efforts inform our national disaster preparedness, weather forecasting, environmental threat management, and more,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, said in a statement. “This move has nothing to do with efficiency – and in fact, it will endanger our communities and leave us all more vulnerable to destructive and costly natural disasters.”

A NOAA spokesman reached for comment referred The Post to officials at the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, and the Office of Budget and Management.

“No final funding decisions have been made,” budget office spokeswoman Alexandra McCandless said in an email.

The proposal is the Trump administration’s opening salvo in negotiations with Congress over the federal budget for the fiscal year starting in October. Lawmakers could make changes, or could fail to act on the budget plan at all and operate the government under stopgap funding measures, as is currently the case.

Labs, Sea Grant at risk

The administration is proposing to zero out funding for programs including all NOAA labs related to climate, weather and oceans, including 16 cooperative institutes housed at universities across the country; regional climate data centers that track historic weather conditions across the country; and Sea Grant programs focused on coastal environments and economies.

It would transfer many NOAA functions to other agencies. A National Marine Fisheries Service office focused on protecting vulnerable species would be moved to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Space Weather Prediction Center, responsible for forecasting geomagnetic storms that can wreak havoc on GPS and communication systems, to the Department of Homeland Security.

Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, said such moves seemed to introduce new inefficiencies and hurdles for scientists.

“It almost looks like an AI-generated budget,” he said, “eliminating anything associated with climate” even if it had little to do with climate change.

The budget document also calls for some immediate actions.

It orders NOAA to halt any spending on a program to develop the next generation of geostationary satellites, which provide a constant picture of weather across the U.S. as they remain in fixed positions flying above North America. The document said “proactive action” was needed “to address unsustainable costs in NOAA’s satellite acquisition programs.”

Project 2025, a playbook for a second Trump administration spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, had drawn attention for a call to privatize many of the functions of the Weather Service. So far, the administration has not taken such steps, though its efforts to reduce the federal workforce and review agencies’ spending have left many Weather Service offices more strapped than usual.

“The Weather Service is flat funded, but it is not held harmless,” Spinrad said.

Project 2025 also called for the dismantling of NOAA, an agency the report called “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The proposal comes as the Trump administration made separate recent cuts to a NOAA research partnership with Princeton University, citing a need to combat “climate anxiety,” and to a government office tasked with a report released every four years detailing the ways climate change is affecting the country.

The climate data collected by NOAA is used by a range of Americans, from farmers planning their crops to communities preparing for worsening wildfires and more severe storms.

It also serves as a foundation for much of climate scientists’ work around the world, because it spans decades and is so comprehensive, said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. Scientists rely on NOAA datasets to evaluate changes in Earth’s climate, and use it as a benchmark for advanced models that assess the consequences of future planetary warming.

“The information provided by NOAA represents the factual backbone of how we know that our climate is changing,” Rogelj said.

• Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment.