The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to a draft budget proposal viewed by NPR.
The agency's budget for 2026 would be slashed by more than 25% overall from its current level of roughly $6 billion under the proposal, which would need to be approved by Congress. The draft cuts to NOAA's research operations and fisheries services are particularly severe.
If enacted, the cuts would "take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing and the American people," says Craig McLean, a former director of NOAA's office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, the agency's research arm, whose career spanned multiple administrations.
The budget aims to eliminate OAR, cutting the budget by close to 75% from previous levels and slashing all funding for research that focuses on climate and weather. A few groups from the office, like a team that works on tornado science, would be moved to other parts of the organization. The budget would also end funding for the many cooperative research centers scattered across the country that contribute to climate and weather research. The proposed budget comes as the administration has already fired hundreds of NOAA employees.
It also proposes slashing the operations and personnel budget of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which manages the country's ocean fisheries, by nearly 30%, and moving the rest of the office into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — another agency entirely. It also asks for the Fisheries Service staff still with the agency to prioritize ways within its purview to "unleash American energy."
The proposal also aims to slim down NOAA's investment in some of its premier satellite technology, called geostationary satellites, by 44% compared to current levels. The agency currently has five in orbit, which provide much of the data critical for weather forecasts, as well as weather and climate research and coastal security. The agency was in the process of developing the next generation of its satellites, which would have included several new instruments; the next was scheduled to go into orbit in 2032. The cuts to the program will jeopardize that plan and hamper the progression of key science, according to NOAA officials familiar with the program who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The budget for the National Weather Service would remain intact.
The overall impacts of the cuts would ripple into Americans' lives, says Rep, Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. "What NOAA does is crucial to the lifesaving weather research and services that it provides to the American people," she says. "This budget will leave NOAA hollowed out and unable to perform its life-saving work." The budget draft has not yet been finalized and could change after review.
White House Office of Management and Budget spokesperson Alexandra McCandless wrote in an email that "no final funding decisions have been made." The U.S. Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.
Project 2025 provided a preview
Many of the proposed changes echo concepts outlined in Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint organized by the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation think tank, a document the Trump administration has followed closely in recent months.
Project 2025 calls for NOAA to "be broken up and downsized," keeping the pieces that many Americans are familiar with, like the National Weather Service, and dismantling many of NOAA's other offices. The proposed moves follow that rubric, such as shifting the Fisheries Service to another agency.
It also called the agency part of "the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry" and laid out ways NOAA's climate science research could be curtailed, some of which have been proposed in the budget document.
Decades of research by thousands of scientists in the U.S. and internationally, have linked rising atmospheric carbon dioxide with a warming Earth. Human activities, like burning coal, gas and other fossil fuels, are the primary cause of rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
Other disruptions at the agency
Earlier this week, hundreds of NOAA employees who had been fired in February, then re-hired under a court order, were once again fired. The most recent firings occurred after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could move forward with firing those probationary orders, at least for now.
Cuts to probationary staff, in tandem with the proposed slashing of the research and operations budgets, could hobble the agency's ability to keep Americans safe, says Andy Hazelton, a hurricane expert who was among those re-fired this week. "NOAA was already stretched thin and understaffed," he says. "It's going to go from stretched thin to decimated."
NOAA provides most of the raw data and the models that predict hurricanes, and the hurricane forecasts many Americans see on their phones or TVs are created by the agency. Hazelton says reducing the research and observation capabilities of the agency could regress hurricane forecasting capability by the equivalent of decades.
The cuts to the research wing, OAR, says former NOAA Deputy Undersecretary Mary Glackin, who served over several administrations, would "decimate the laboratory systems and the relationship that we have with universities," who work in partnership with the agency on many of its climate, weather, and other research projects. The proposed changes would be "monumental," she says.
NOAA provides much of the raw data required for weather forecasts via a wide array of data-collection tools, from satellites to ocean buoys to weather balloons. And its scientists run models that turn that data into useful information, like those short-term weather forecasts, seasonal outlooks and long-term looks at how climate change is affecting Earth.
The agency also includes offices that manage the billions of dollars of U.S. fishery resources, like tuna, cod, scallops and crab. Its scientists figure out how many fish can be caught in order to sustain fish populations in the long term, a task legally required by law. Interruptions to fisheries operations have resulted in the past in delays in season opening or lower annual quotas fishermen are allowed to catch.
The agency also maintains coastal maps critical to safe maritime activities.
The cuts to the climate programs, Glackin says, are shortsighted. "If you're cutting your research, you don't care about tomorrow," she says. It would "take a very long time to recover from something like that."
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