When Tom Di Liberto received an email from his employer on the afternoon of February 27, he was disappointed but not surprised. His job as a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had come to an end. He had until 5 p.m. to leave the office, the email said. By that night, his work account was locked. Di Liberto had seen the writing on the wall, but he was sad to be swept up in the Trump administration’s massive cuts to the federal workforce over the past two months, he said.
“It's just a very bad time when it comes to climate here in the United States,” Di Liberto said. The people who work at NOAA are some of the best scientists in the world, he added. “It’s hard to see these cuts and think positively about the future outlook for our country.”
Di Liberto was one of over 1,000 probationary employees laid off from NOAA, the world-renowned agency responsible for weather forecasting and other major scientific research. He was nearly two weeks away from the end of his probationary period, a common trial period for many federal employees.
Di Liberto, along with thousands of other federal employees, was reinstated and placed on administrative leave after a district judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order against dozens of agencies that had terminated workers in March. He doesn’t know what the outcome of the case will be, or if he will get his job back, but he is already seeing the impacts of the layoffs on weather forecasting.
The National Weather Service, an agency within NOAA that provides vital forecasts and weather warnings, has reduced the number of weather balloons it is launching across the country due to staffing shortages, Di Liberto said. The NWS uses weather balloons to gather information on humidity, temperature, wind, and other data that helps predict weather and model storms. Less data means less accurate weather forecasting. “That’s bad for any sort of future impact,” Di Liberto added.
The layoffs are particularly concerning as climate change worsens extreme weather events, climate scientists are warning. Flavio Lehner, a climate scientist who studies droughts and climate change at Cornell University, said his research may take a hit from the layoffs. He needs data on ocean temperatures to study droughts, but some of the people who process ocean temperature observation data have either retired or are being let go, he added. It could signal a halt to critical climate research. “We’re basically running the risk of going backwards in time,” Lehner said.
Studies have found that accurate weather forecasts save both money and lives. Onestudy from the American Meteorological Society found that the National Weather Service provided a 73:1 return on investment. For $1.38 billion spent on the National Weather Service, $102.1 billion was returned in estimated public value.
Anotherstudy from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that accurate weather forecasts are vital for saving lives, particularly during extreme temperature events. Researchers found that improving forecast accuracy by 50 percent could prevent approximately 2,200 deaths annually. The study highlights that underestimating severe weather conditions can lead to increased mortality, as individuals may not take necessary precautions.
For coastal communities, information on climate change is necessary for climate adaptation and infrastructure decisions. If someone wants to build a waterfront property, for example, they will need to look forward in terms of what the flood risk will be, not backward in time.
NOAA’s datasets, such as itsCoastal Ocean Reanalysis (CORA), provide communities along the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf coasts with years of historical water level data to assess coastal flood risk, so they can plan ahead for future floods. Another NOAA product, theSea Level Calculator, produces location-specific scenarios for sea level and flooding so local governments and residents can make smarter investments.
Without NOAA’s data and flood warnings, the cost of flooding will rise, Lehner said. Flooding is already one of the most costly and frequent natural disasters in the United States, costing the country over $180 billion per year, according to the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee. “Collectively, if we’re less well prepared for things that will happen, as a country, this will be economically a less ideal outcome,” Lehner said.
In addition to public safety and economic vitality, NOAA’s data is critical for international security. The layoffs are “a national security issue,” Brandon Jones, the president of the American Geophysical Union, said. “The security of the innovation that should come from advancing science is being stunted.”
NOAA’s scientists are involved in the global science community through organizations like the World Meteorological Organization and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and removing scientists from the global conversation could be a threat to international stability. “The US voice will not be present in discussions related to climate mitigation, climate technology, impacts of climate, and all of those things that are not just national security but planet security issues,” Jones toldSierra.
Jones said the impacts of the budget cuts could be even more far-reaching than we know. “It’s very much a tapestry,” he noted. “If we want to remove that NOAA string in the science tapestry, what’s the unraveling going to look like? Is there thought behind the interconnectedness of it all?”
Another thread in the NOAA tapestry is ocean wildlife. Without NOAA’s research and data-gathering, endangered ocean animals will be impacted, said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
NOAA Fisheries tracks marine mammals like North Atlantic right whales as they migrate annually from Canada to coastal waters off South Carolina, Georgia, and northeastern Florida. The leading causes of death for North Atlantic right whales, a critically endangered species with only 370 remaining, are entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes. Since 2020, at least 16 North Atlantic right whales have been killed or injured by hits from boats or ships. Without data from NOAA, fishermen can’t predict where whales are migrating and may hit them or accidentally entangle them in their gear. “Early warning systems are key to preventing both human and wildlife impacts all around,” Kildruff said.
The layoffs at NOAA are “incredibly disappointing,” Kildruff said. “Thinking about all the different angles that this is impacting, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger in a way that I didn’t imagine.”
For climate scientists like Di Liberto, the Trump administration’s actions against climate science have been particularly frustrating. “When it comes to climate, the hard thing for me is just that it's happening. It’s silly that it’s 2025 and we even have to be talking about whether it's happening or whether it's caused by humans” he said. “It’s like going outside and seeing the sky is blue and having someone tell you ‘No, the sky is green.’”
Di Liberto said his lifelong dream has been to work at NOAA, ever since he was in elementary school. He plans to keep working in climate science, he said. “This is what I love to do, and as long as climate change is still a problem, I'm going to be out doing work on climate change in some shape or form. At the end of the day, the job is to help people.”
