GAO finds multilingual-alert failures left 26 million people at higher risk
U.S. Office of Personnel Management workforce data, last updated in August, show that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lost more than 3,000 staff since January 2025 and brought on 525 new hires over the same period, leaving a 2,500-person deficit. NOAA has lost roughly 20% of its staff since January 2025, the agency’s biggest staffing drop in the last decade. The losses include hundreds of people who lost their jobs during layoffs or took incentives to retire or resign as the administration worked to shrink the federal government last year, along with those who left voluntarily.
From the start of his second term, President Donald Trump’s administration has slashed staff levels, canceled contracts and grants, and shut down databases and research laboratories. Former government officials and scientists have warned that the cuts have severely hampered the country’s capacity to forecast, research and respond to extreme weather while the United States faces winter hazards associated with a potentially historic El Niño.
Rick Spinrad, who spent three decades at NOAA and served as administrator for the Biden administration, identified gaps in staffing, operations and engagement with the public as the agency’s top three concerns. According to Spinrad, NOAA was already shorthanded in those areas when Trump took office.
The workforce data show that reductions differed across NOAA. The public affairs team that helps disseminate important information was roughly halved. Information technology management workers, who support forecasting and data infrastructure, were reduced by roughly 27%. More than 500 staffers across a range of science positions were lost against 46 new hires. About 10% fewer meteorologists and meteorology technicians were in place as the United States entered autumn this year, even after the National Weather Service rushed to staff up following the administration’s 2025 layoffs. Only 40 meteorologists were added across NOAA between January and August this year, with hundreds of vacancies across the country still open as winter approaches.
The National Weather Service, housed within NOAA, analyzes and collects roughly 6.3 billion observations each day and releases 1.5 million forecasts and up to 50,000 warnings each year. Weather stations have delayed data collection and cut operating hours, while hundreds of meteorological and other technical positions remain vacant across the service’s 122 forecast offices. The Washington Post reported last September that staffers had worked double shifts to keep some offices open, and employees described an agency pushed to its limits. A Bloomberg/Getty Images photograph showed workers at NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate Prediction headquarters in College Park, Maryland.
The Government Accountability Office found that the National Weather Service failed to adequately provide multilingual weather alerts because of staffing and funding cuts, leaving 26 million people in the United States at higher risk. Staffing limitations also appeared in field operations. Delayed or limited weather-balloon launches left parts of the Great Plains unprepared for tornadoes, while limited warnings reached rural communities in Alaska, where more than 1,500 people were displaced by floods earlier this year.
This year’s super El Niño, characterized by warmer-than-average equatorial sea-surface temperatures, can fuel extreme weather events around the world. It is already climbing off the charts and is expected to strengthen through the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn and winter. Scientists said it could bring dangerous temperature spikes, supercharge storms in parts of the American West, raise California sea levels by up to a foot and set the stage for debris flows, landslides and flash floods.
Photographs accompanying the reporting showed the surf conditions associated with the weather. On October 9, 2026, a Mario Tama/Getty Images photograph showed people watching Pacific Ocean waves crash into a seawall amid powerful surf in Long Beach, California. A Mike Blake/Reuters photograph showed waves battering the shoreline in Laguna Beach, California, during a period of high tides associated with El Niño. On October 11, 2026, a David McNew/Getty Images photograph showed waves crashing into damaged homes as an ocean surge and very high tides generated by Tropical Storm Rachel battered the southern California coast.
NOAA provides forecasts and information used by communities and industries for tasks ranging from crop schedules to emergency-response preparations when hurricanes are brewing or fire conditions are aligning. The agency operates early-warning systems for tsunamis, monitors seafood supply chains and provides ocean data needed for safe shipping and port operators. The Guardian reported that the expected losses are expected to have a profound effect on the American public and to be felt globally. Scientists and forecasters around the world depend on NOAA satellites, studies and intelligence, including data-sharing arrangements that track severe weather across Europe, coordinate disaster response in the Caribbean and monitor deforestation and the effects of the climate crisis in the Amazon rainforest.
The Guardian also reported that morale at NOAA has plummeted, burnout has increased and vital work has been hampered. It said capacity had weakened and that a large-scale disaster would quickly expose the most dangerous gaps. “The system has not really been tested since all the cuts happened,” said Tom Di Liberto, a former NOAA climate scientist who now works as the media director of Climate Central. Di Liberto asked whether the country could handle the scale of potential extremes: “Whether we as a country can handle the kind of coast-to-coast extremes that could potentially happen this winter is a big question.”
Spinrad said: “We are more capable than we have been in the past because of the developments in the technology, the satellites that were flying, the observing systems that we’ve put in place.” He continued: “But everything that this administration is doing suggests that we cannot and will not sustain those capabilities. So the real question is – are we at a turning point now?”
Monica Medina, who served as principal deputy administrator of NOAA during the Obama administration, said, “I worry about loss of life and about our inability to be protected at a time when we need our government the most.” She warned, “If this is a real test” of a hotter, more precarious future, “we’re going to flunk.” Dr. Anna Zivian, a climate researcher and policy expert, said, “There has been this hollowing out – there’s no time to do anything other than the very basics.” She added, “I suspect we haven’t seen the worst outcomes from the loss of capacity yet,” and, “You can’t pick up that kind of slack.”
The Trump administration has terminated dozens of grants representing a loss of more than $28 million in funding for states, cities, nonprofits and universities, according to Grant Witness, which tracks science-related grant making by the federal government. Grant Witness found that climate research was the most affected and that the number of grant awards in fiscal year 2026 was 37% lower than the 2021-2024 average. President Trump has proposed cutting $1.6 billion from NOAA’s funding, a 26% drop, for next year’s budget. The Guardian reported that many of the proposed cuts would not make it through the budget process, while the proposal adds pressure on staff still working at NOAA. Requests for comment sent to NOAA and its parent agency, the Department of Commerce, were not returned before publication.
“People at Noaa are nervous,” Di Liberto said, adding that employees across the organization were afraid they would get in trouble if they said something that conflicted with the administration’s anti-climate narrative. “You want people doing their best work when we face these extremes,” he said. The Guardian reported separately that denials of human-caused climate change from the top had made scientists’ and forecasters’ jobs harder as they worked to put urgent information into context for the American public and people around the world. “It’s incredibly difficult,” Di Liberto said. “Imagine being told the number six doesn’t exist and then being asked to do math.”
An El Niño year can be high risk, but it also offers a chance to learn and prepare and a glimpse of what the world might expect as temperatures rise. Experts worried that a reduced-staff NOAA could miss a vital research opportunity. “This El Niño is so useful in a sense of getting an understanding about where we stand for dealing with extreme weather around the world,” Di Liberto said. “Unfortunately we’re going to learn a lot this winter about our ability to deal with multiple extremes happening at the same time.” Di Liberto and other experts also expressed concerns that not enough had been done to ready communities for the coming hazards or capture important data that would inform the future. “When it comes to preparing for El Niño events – or any weather extreme – the preparation happens during the off season,” he said.
During the last strong El Niño a decade ago, NOAA deployed planes, weather balloons, unmanned aircraft and a research ship to collect data. NPR reported in September that only “a handful of unmanned watercraft” will be deployed into the Pacific this year.
The Trump administration has also begun removing ocean-monitoring systems that provide important data during El Niño and shaved roughly $6 billion off an investment secured for weather satellites that would have propelled major advancements in future weather predictions. A Government Accountability Office analysis warned that the sharp reduction could create a gap in satellite coverage and severely disrupt data. Funding for a decade-long project to monitor the oceans using autonomous robotic devices called Biogeochemical-Argo floats, part of a global effort, is set to expire at the end of October. A Jay Mallin/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock photograph showed protesters gathered outside NOAA’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, to protest job cuts.