Trump’s administration is moving forward with new cuts to NOAA’s next-generation climate satellites, scaling back tools that scientists say are critical for tracking storms, pollution, and ocean changes. The decision eliminates instruments that would have measured air quality—including wildfire smoke and industrial pollution and another that would have captured ocean conditions with unprecedented detail.
This latest move comes as critics still point to his earlier weather budget rollbacks, which hit NOAA and the National Weather Service hard. Those cuts eliminated key research labs, shelved flash-flood modeling tools, and slashed hundreds of staff positions across the country. In Texas, local weather offices left shorthanded struggled to warn communities during catastrophic flooding earlier this summer. Forecasts didn’t capture the historic rainfall, and with fewer staff to coordinate alerts, officials say the warnings lagged behind the disaster. More than 100 lives were lost.
After the tragedy, mounting political pressure forced NOAA to restore nearly 450 jobs, rehiring meteorologists, hydrologists, and radar technicians. While that hiring reversal was seen as a step in the right direction, now this new round of satellite cuts will leave forecasting weaker and disaster preparedness compromised.
