CNN
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The Trump administration has a government aimed at reducing the government, set up at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where around 800 employees are tapped for fire, according to two sources close to the government.
One of the people on Friday said that by the end of the weekend, one could potentially sacrifice more than 1,000 employees to weather, climate and environmental agencies.
Most departments of the institutions employing scientists and experts in the areas of weather, marine, biodiversity, climate and other research and planetary monitoring have been affected.
Probation employees – those who mostly worked within a year were fired Thursday, a person inside the National Weather Service told CNN. Weather Services has 350-375 employees with that status, but it is not clear how many of them were affected. The person has heard there are several exemptions given to important positions – perhaps the role of life-threatening disaster prediction, such as hurricanes and severe thunderstorms.
National Weather Service employees are protected by unions and were about to contact the affected employees Thursday night. Some fired employees said they intend to explore legal options on social media.
Sources close to NOAA said those charged with termination appeared to act in a way that minimized the paper path.
A letter from a fired NOAA worker said, “The agency is discovering that your abilities, knowledge and/or skills are not suitable for ongoing employment as they do not meet the agency’s current needs.”
Many probation workers from several federal agencies who were fired earlier this month have received letters saying they are being let go because their performance is not enough to justify further employment.
“Protecting life and property”
The mission of the National Weather Service is to “protect life and property.”
The end is a blow to an agency that has been understaffed for years despite the accelerated climate crisis and more frequent extreme weather. Critics of the administration’s plan to cut government agencies – directives outlined in Project 2025 – say the layoffs further undermine America’s ability to accurately predict hurricanes, tornadoes and other costly and deadly extreme weather.
Meteorologists and computer engineers across NOAA were affected, including the Hurricane Research Department, where employees work to improve the accuracy of hurricane predictions. Andrew Hazelton, a doctoral researcher in meteorology, was one of the employees who closed Thursday, he said on social media. His role was to assess hurricane predictions and improve the physics of the models that the National Hurricane Centre uses to track storms.
“I enjoy meteorology, because the weather affects everyone and there’s so much to learn,” Hazelton is quoted as saying in his NOAA bio. “Growing up in Florida, I went through several hurricanes and I was able to study and analyze them in my career.”
Other divisions that have ended their role include the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Institute for Environmental Research in Great Lakes, and the Department for Developing and Improvement of U.S. Weather Models.
Zachary Labe was one such modeler who ended.
“My job was to enhance NOAA’s use of machine learning.
Sunlen Serfaty from CNN contributed to this report.
