Top Hurricane Scientists Sound the Alarm on Looming NOAA Cuts

Long-time head of NOAA’s premier hurricane lab in Miami says proposed cuts would reduce forecast accuracy by as much as 40 percent

One of three NOAA-operated hurricane hunter aircraft (nicknamed “Kermit”) taking off from NOAA's Aircraft Operations Center (AOC) in Lakeland, Florida. Credit: NOAA

On Wednesday some of the nation’s top hurricane scientists joined House Democrats for a virtual press conference to sound the alarm on proposed budget cuts that would severely degrade hurricane monitoring and forecasting.

As we first reported in this newsletter last Tuesday, NOAA – the parent agency of the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center – is proposing the full elimination of dozens of world-class weather and climate facilities across the U.S., including Miami’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and its Hurricane Research Division (HRD), responsible for most of the advances in hurricane forecasting over the past 50 years.

On Wednesday’s Zoom conference, Dr. Robert Atlas, AOML’s long-time director until his retirement in 2019, warned what shuttering AOML would mean for hurricane forecasting. “It is estimated that this loss [of AOML and its cooperative institute CIMAS] would result in a 20 to 40% decrease in hurricane forecast accuracy which would cost the economy more than $10 billion for a single hurricane season.” The decreased forecast accuracy would not only heighten the risk for large loss of life, but could also put additional strain on Florida’s shaky property insurance market, threatening higher premiums or coverage loss for home and business owners.

AOML, which employs around 100 to 150 people at its campus on Virginia Key, has an annual operating budget of around $20 million. The annual savings the facility provides to the U.S. economy is estimated at over 200 times its annual budget and is more than NOAA’s entire annual budget.

Separately in a Senate nominations hearing held Wednesday, Neil Jacobs, President Trump’s pick to lead NOAA, stood by the administration’s proposed cuts. “I support the President’s budget,” Jacobs responded when asked by Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey if he supports the 27% cut to NOAA funding in 2026.

NOAA hurricane hunter missions already in jeopardy

While NOAA’s proposed budget still needs to survive committee markup as part of the Congressional appropriations process to make it into the final Commerce, Justice, Science spending bill – a process that begins today in the Senate – DOGE-directed staffing cuts are already hampering critical hurricane data collection, making it harder for forecasters to issue timely and accurate warnings.

Dr. Frank Marks, a 45-year veteran of NOAA who led the agency’s Hurricane Research Division and spearheaded its Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP), said on Wednesday that half the staff required to fly NOAA hurricane hunter missions were tossed out in recent staffing hits, which will result in fewer hurricane hunter flights for this hurricane season.

NOAA’s aircraft operate state-of-the-art hurricane monitoring technology, including three-dimensional tail doppler radar and expendable, AI-powered autonomous drones, that have proven invaluable to detecting rapidly developing hurricanes in recent years.

“This is when progress stopped”

Another expert that joined House Democrats Wednesday was James Franklin, NHC hurricane forecaster for nearly two decades who supervised the center’s hurricane specialists before his retirement in 2017. He outlined what would happen if NOAA’s research arm was shut down as proposed.

“Right away, the Doppler radar missions would stop, along with the forecast improvement they bring. Almost certainly by next year, some of the most important intensity models would fall out of service, degrading NHC’s intensity forecasts. Websites that provide forecasters with crucial satellite analyses would break. Intensity estimates for storms beyond aircraft range would be degraded. Formation forecasts for disturbances would likely become less accurate.”

He concluded his remarks with an ominous message. “My fear is that we’ll look back 25 years from now and say this is when that progress stopped.” (read James’s full remarks in his Substack post here)

Tropics staying quiet for now

For now both the Atlantic and busy eastern Pacific are taking a breather.

Thursday morning satellite showing the leading edge of a large Saharan dust outbreak moving westward through the central Atlantic. Credit: NOAA

Another big plume of Saharan dust is surging westward through the central Atlantic and conditions will stay largely hostile to organized tropical systems over the next week or two.