The National Weather Service is reducing the number of weather balloon launches—and thus, the amount of data collected from American skies—following sweeping cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by the Trump White House.
Hundreds of federal workers at NOAA—about 10% of the workforce—were fired on the last day of February, as the Trump administration continued its culling of federal funding across the sciences.
“We’re going to lose data because of this staffing,” said Michael Morgan, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former NOAA administrator, in a press conference Monday. “And that loss of data then translates into less precise forecasts, more uncertainties in the forecast.”
According to a National Weather Service wire published late last week, weather balloon observations are now suspended out of Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota, due to a lack of staffing. Inside Climate News reported that launches were also suspended in Kotzebue, Alaska.
Typically, the NWS launches weather balloons twice each day from 100 sites across the country, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Basin. The radiosondes attached to those weather balloons collect information on a suite of factors that contribute to weather, including temperatures, dew points, humidity, barometric pressures, and wind speed and direction.
A second NWS Public Information Statement said that weather balloon launches would be cut down to a single launch per day out of Aberdeen, South Dakota, Grand Junction, Colorado, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Gaylord, Michigan, North Platte, Nebraska, and Riverton, Wyoming.
“Does it mean every single forecast is going to be poor?” Morgan added. “No, but it does mean that the uncertainties in our forecast will grow over time.”
Similar views were espoused by NOAA meteorologist and hurricane hunter Andrew Hazelton, who spoke to Gizmodo last week as his employment status wended its way through the federal court system. Hazelton—and many other federal employees—have been left in employment limbo after being laid off, but now reinstated, albeit not permitted to work.
“Whenever there’s a hurricane, better forecasts allow people to get out—or vice versa, if they’re not going to be impacted, they don’t have to close up their school or business,” Hazelton told Gizmodo. “Better forecasts save lives and money. In a lot of ways, NOAA really pays for itself.”
Last month’s cost-cutting measures also reduced the workforce at the Food and Drug Administration and the National Park Service, among other agencies. It will take time to see the impacts of the layoffs across the board, and the same goes for the staffing shortages at NWS locations. The NWS Press Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Exactly how this diminished data will affect weather forecasts won’t be clear immediately, but what is clear is that the cuts will mean we have less information about what’s going on in our skies.