A senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center works on tracking Hurricane Beryl, the first hurricane of the 2024 season, at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida on July 1, 2024. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
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The Trump administration fired roughly 800 employees of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) on Thursday, with more layoffs possible.
An email from the U.S. Department of Commerce Thursday afternoon informed employees that they would lose their jobs the same day, reported The Guardian.
“The majority of probationary employees in my office have been with the agency for 10+ years and just got new positions,” said a worker who was still employed and spoke to The Guardian under condition of anonymity. “If we lose them, we’re losing not just the world-class work they do day to day but also decades of expertise and institutional knowledge.”
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Many recently terminated employees of NOAA and other United States government agencies had years of tenure, but were on probationary status due to having worked as contractors before recently becoming federal employees, The Washington Post reported.
In many cases, fired employees had years of tenure working with the agencies, but they were on probationary status because they had been working as contractors and had only recently become federal employees.
Andrew Hazelton, a physical scientist with the National Weather Service (NWS), is a veteran of NOAA Hurricane Hunters missions, during which he flew through dangerous storms to collect data for improved forecasting.
“Unfortunately I can confirm the rumors going around today since I received ‘the email,’” Hazelton wrote on X. “I don’t want to make any comments other than I am exploring legal options in a couple of avenues.”
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Most NOAA divisions, which employ specialists in weather, biodiversity, climate, oceans and other research and monitoring fields, were affected, reported CNN.
Probationary employees who had in most cases been on the job a year or less were fired, a NWS employee told CNN. The weather service employs from 350 to 375 people with that status, though it wasn’t clear how many of them had been impacted. The source had heard some exemptions were given to crucial positions, like those involved with forecasting life-threatening disasters such as severe thunderstorms and hurricanes.
The NOAA termination letters said, “The Agency finds you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.”
An anonymous NOAA employee said Americans who rely on the climate data, forecasting and sustainably monitored fisheries of the agency would suffer, in addition to the laid-off workers, The Guardian reported.
“Words can’t describe the impact this will have, both on us at NOAA and on the country,” the employee said. “It’s just wrong all around.”
The mission of NWS is to “protect lives and property,” but the agency has long been understaffed, reported CNN.
As the accelerating climate crisis causes more frequent extreme weather, critics of the Trump administration’s plan to pare down the agency have said layoff would make it harder for the country to accurately forecast costly and often deadly events like tornadoes and hurricanes.
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Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said the cuts were “at best misguided and ill-informed,” The Guardian reported.
At worst, Spinrad said, they would be “dangerously risky to the lives and property of Americans all around the country.”
Craig McLean, former NOAA research director and an employee of the agency for four decades, called the terminations “callous, insulting, vengeful and offensive.”
“The nation will be compromised in safety, science and international standing,” McLean said. “This is not my America.”
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