The US National Weather Service will merge two of its largest forecasting units as it prepares for the loss of as many as 1,000 staffers.
Employees were encouraged to take early retirements asa handful of consolidations were announced during an all-hands meeting at the agency on Thursday with Director Ken Graham, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Among the departments being merged are the Weather Prediction Center, responsible for national forecasts for rain and snow, and the Climate Prediction Center, which is responsible for seasonal outlooks and tracking the El Niño and La Niña cycle, according to an internal document seen by Bloomberg News. A weather service research laboratory will also merge with an environmental modeling center in suburban Maryland.
The agency didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The NWS could lose 775 to 1,000 employees from its current workforce of more than 4,000 due to firings, early retirements and voluntary separation programs being offered to some federal staffers, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the union that represents agency workers.
“Those are big numbers that we’re looking at,” Fahy said in an interview. “We don’t know what people are going to decide in the next few weeks. There’s still a great deal of fear.”
The weather service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had already been short-staffed even before the Trump administration held the reins, according to statistics provided by the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
The Project 2025 policy plan, published by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, calls for weather forecasting to be fully commercialized and for NOAA to be dismantled, with many of its functions reshuffled into other federal departments. The document foreshadowed policies that went on to be adopted by the Trump administration.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has overseen a sweeping overhaul of the federal workforce. Firings and voluntary departures had reduced NOAA’s staff by hundreds prior to this week’s meeting, though some workers have been rehired and placed on administrative leave pending court challenges.
“Ultimately there is no indication this is a good-faith effort to improve efficiency or cut waste,” said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at the University of California Los Angeles. The cuts so far prompted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have been “indiscriminate” and are causing “collateral damage in every federal agency.”
Weather touches almost every aspect of the US economy. Energy, retail and transportation are among the industries frequently roiled by natural disasters. Commercial forecasters, meanwhile, use federal weather data to issue predictions for private clients and members of the public.
Some routine NOAA tasks — such as twice-daily weather balloon launches that provide crucial data for computer forecast models — have been suspended in some locations due to a lack of available staff.
“The damage is already starting to be seen and measured,” said Craig McLean, who served as NOAA’s acting chief scientist during the last Trump administration. He spoke in an interview ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
Photo: Meteorologists monitor weather activity at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction. Photographer: Michael A. McCoy/Bloomberg
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