Why We Need NOAA Now More Than Ever

Transcript

Mark Hertsgaard: Hello and welcome to another press briefing with Covering Climate Now. I’m Mark Hertsgaard. I’m the Executive Director of Covering Climate Now and the Environment Correspondent for the Nation Magazine. Today’s subject: why we need NOAA? But first, Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration of 500 plus news outlets that reach a total audience of billions of people. We’re organized by journalists for journalists to help all of us tell the climate story with rigor and impact. Journalists and newsrooms everywhere are invited to get involved with our 89 Percent Project. That’s a year-long initiative exploring the pivotal but little-known fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s people between 80 and 89% of them want their governments to take stronger climate action. To learn more, you can come to the webinars that we’re organizing on this next week and go to our 89 Percent Project landing page at our website, coveringclimatenow.org.

While you’re there, you can also look into submitting your work for the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards we’re accepting submissions through March 31st, so don’t delay. And now, to why we need NOAA. Now, we’re not talking here about the Noah of the Bible’s Old Testament, but rather about the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although come to think of it, the record flood that led Noah to build his ark was exactly the kind of extreme weather event that today’s NOAA protects people against through its agency, the National Weather Service. And as Covering Climate Now reported in our Climate Beat newsletter last week, the Trump administration is trying to cripple NOAA by ordering hundreds of employees to be laid off, a move legal experts say is illegal. The public deserves to know what’s at stake here, which means we as journalists must get up to speed first ourselves. We’ve assembled a crackerjack group of experts to help us here today and to lead the discussion, I now introduced my esteemed colleague at Covering Climate Now, David Dickson. He is our resident meteorologist and TV Engagement Director. David.

David Dickson: Thank you so much, Mark. As you mentioned, we have already seen anywhere between 800 and 1,200 NOAA employees, all of which are passionate public servants and experienced scientists already let go in the first wave of cuts to this federal agency. Unfortunately, this is unlikely going to be the last, with reports coming out that there’s going to be a second wave of cuts potentially as soon as today of more than 1,000, marking a nearly 20% reduction at NOAA as meteorologists, as climate reporters, as general news, consumers, we know that the impacts of this will likely be extensive from public safety, economic well-being, and future climate research, not only at the US level, but also globally as well.

Let’s go ahead and jump right in as there is a lot to discuss. I’m so grateful to be joined by my colleagues, some of which who’ve worked with NOAA their entire careers, on this panel, who will help us better understand why we need NOAA more than ever. Join me in welcoming Bernadette Woods Placky. She is the Chief Meteorologist and Vice President for Engagement at the nonprofit Climate Central. She directs Climate Central’s Climate Matters program where she leads a team that creates weekly data and other reporting resources for media professionals on the links between climate change and weather. Also joining us, another meteorologist, and an esteemed one, Alan Sealls, recently retired after a 37-year award-winning career, at that, in broadcast meteorology and is the President-Elect of the American Meteorological Society, a global community committed to advancing weather, water, and climate science, and service.

And finally, Gabrielle Canon, an award-winning journalist currently serving as the Senior Climate Change reporter and Extreme Weather Correspondent for The Guardian. She’s previously written for USA TODAY, Mother Jones, VICE, Huffington Post, and holds a master’s degree in specialized journalism from USC. Please join me in wishing all of our colleagues here a very warm virtual welcome. Let’s go ahead and dive right in. We’ll start off with you, Alan, as a broadcast meteorologist. While many understand where to get their forecast, whether it’s their favorite weather app on their phone or their trusted broadcast professional TV meteorologists, far fewer understand where exactly this underlying forecast data comes from. Can you go ahead and explain where NOAA and the National Weather Service data forms the backbone of virtually every single forecast Americans consume?

Alan Sealls: Yeah. And start with the fact that NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So weather is how I think most consumers, most people understand what NOAA’s mission is, but NOAA also deals with the threat of tsunamis, it deals with the threat of power outages from a solar storm like we saw the Northern Lights last fall, and then where I am here in Mobile, Alabama, 15 years ago, we had this awful oil spill, BP Horizon, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. And NOAA was highly involved with that because it did involve the ocean and the atmosphere, but take it as the National Weather Service. NOAA is in the Department of Commerce, the US Department of Commerce. It’s funded by your tax dollars and their mission is to study the atmosphere, study the oceans, research, learn, and then predict. And all of this is really a benefit for US taxpayers.

It’s a service that involves when it comes to weather, it starts with satellites which are constantly watching the earth. It starts with radars that are scattered across the United States and US territories. It also includes things that most people wouldn’t think about on a daily basis like weather balloon launches. And that’s because we have to understand the atmosphere in three dimensions in order to predict it. NOAA also takes care of buoys that are in our oceans in addition to doing ocean forecasts. And then NOAA does something that’s really critical. The data is available to anybody, to any business, to any university, to any researcher, and it’s not just in the United States. The data is made available internationally. So NOAA creates a database going back well over 100 years of what we call Climate, the historical record of weather conditions and ocean conditions.

And that allows us in the big picture to build a city. You can’t build a city if you don’t know the average wind direction, the average rainfall, if you don’t know the threat of severe weather. Related to that, to bring it back to current time, many of us are watching for the threat of severe weather tonight, tomorrow, the night after. And we’re watching because NOAA told us four or five days ago that it was possible as we get closer to it, no matter where you live in the United States, the National Weather Service Offices will be watching your local weather specifically and giving you a county by county or parish by parish forecast for what the threats and what the hazards are to you.

So given all that as a broadcaster, retired broadcaster on TV, I would estimate that 90% of what I showed behind me on TV came from NOAA. Whether it was the current temperature at the airport, the wind direction, the forecast model, certainly the satellite, the radar, and it’s basically the same thing on your weather app. And then of course, there are people will say, “Well, no, this app comes from this TV station, that’s theirs.” Well, it is their app, but the data, the majority of it is coming from NOAA. So NOAA is definitely the backbone when it comes to data, data quality, data check, data archive, and data availability.

David Dickson: Absolutely. I’ve heard some of our colleagues say, to argue against NOAA not being useful because we have private companies offering weather apps, would be to argue against grocery stores or rather argue against farmers because we have grocery stores. It really does fund the invisible backbone of virtually everything we consume. Now, Alan, you also talked briefly about weather balloons and some of these other launches, and our colleague and fellow meteorologist, John Morales recently wrote about the so-called butterfly effect of these cuts forcing the discontinuation of some of these weather balloon launches at weather offices in Alaska, Upstate New York, and Maine, as well as some other disruptions. How could these seemingly small disruptions potentially cause much larger impacts when forecasting and preparing for the next storm?

Alan Sealls: Yeah, it’s a lot like the human body. There’s so much going on that we don’t think about. And if you get a scratch, I’m in the yard frequently, if I get a scratch and I see a little bug or an insect, if it’s a mosquito, no big deal. But if it’s a tick, there could be a big deal. Any one little thing could have a huge ripple effect in the big picture. Another analogy is if you drive a car, the traditional car, your tires, your wheels have five lug nuts, you can take off one lug nut and drive around and probably be okay, but at some point if you keep taking off the lug nuts, your car’s ability to function safely is going to be compromised.

And that’s what we’re finding right now. When you start losing weather balloon data, one or two in general is not going to make a big difference, but bit by bit it could compromise the accuracy of a forecast, especially within a local area and especially in a scenario like what we’re facing with the threat of severe weather, where you have to know critically what’s going on above your head.

David Dickson: We’ll come back to that a little bit later on because it certainly is going to be an ongoing problem, especially not only in spring severe weather season, but also as we head into tropical storm season in the Atlantic, not only for the US but for the number of countries that the National Hurricane Center housed within NOAA also provides forecasts to.

Alan Sealls: Can I interrupt you one time? Something else to me that’s even a bigger concern that people don’t think about is the National Weather Service’s human beings using computers to project the weather. They make a forecast in their offices. However, if the communication line goes down, we don’t get that forecast. If the radar goes down, we lose that precise look at where we live and what’s happening. So one of the concerns, it’s not just the people who forecast the weather, it’s the people who support them with the hardware and the software. And whenever you do have some sort of failure or hiccup, you need to be able to get someone immediately to take care of it. So with the cuts throughout NOAA, which I don’t think anyone really knows exactly where they are, if they’re targeted at all, that’s another concern is that the infrastructure that helps to get the data not just into NOAA but out of NOAA, could be compromised.

David Dickson: I do want to just take a moment to flag two main things. One, a recording of this webinar will be available shortly after we finish. So don’t worry too much about that. But secondly, if you do have questions for our panel of esteemed experts, go ahead and use that Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. We’ll get to that in the second half hour. Please just be aware we are only taking questions from qualified journalists, so go ahead and include your name and the publication that you work for in them. With that, let’s head over to Gabrielle. Gabrielle, you’ve reported that NOAA provides essential resources not only to the American public, but the global scientific community as well. What are some of the concerns that they’ve had specifically in regards to future climate research that you’ve heard from NOAA scientists who have spoken to The Guardian?

Gabrielle Canon: Yeah, and you’ll have to bear with me. I am getting over a bit of a cold, so sorry, I sound like-

David Dickson: Same here. Same here. So we’re on the same boat.

Gabrielle Canon: Aren’t we all? But yeah, I mean, this is something that we are seeing, like you said, around the world. NOAA is a global leader. We’ve had this incredible resource not only here in the United States, but obviously in international agreements. And what we’re seeing now is an indiscriminate slashing. So it’s really taking NOAA out of the negotiating, like away from the negotiating table. So one of the things, of course, Donald Trump was very explicit when he was coming into this term that he wanted to pull back from things like the Paris Agreement. He wanted to ensure that the United States was completely insulated against any type of international collaboration, especially when it comes to the climate crisis.

So what I’m hearing from experts is that if you’re stepping away from those positions, especially as the leader, as the experts, not only are we not going to be in those discussions and helping shape global policy and response, but the global community is going to be missing out on this expertise and this leadership that NOAA has taken on. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the work will stop. It just means that the United States will probably be severely disconnected from that work. The other thing that we’re seeing is of course, this approach to trying to remove the climate change discussion from the research itself, which is what researchers are telling me, it’s just not something you can do. I mean, even if your work isn’t specifically tailored to focusing on climate change, it is important context.

If the factors are changing, if the inputs are changing, you can’t disregard that in science. You can’t just remove those words and think that the work is going to be as effective. And so across the board, as we see these lists being made with specific terms being removed from grants, from research, it’s having a severe impact. And I spoke to just someone just yesterday who was a hurricane expert in Miami, who of course, lost his job, and he’s talking about the impact that his role and others not being there will have on that type of work. But beyond that, I mean, he saw in his own research things like ensemble diversity, words that are scientific terms being targeted because of the Trump administration’s war against DEI. So we’re seeing both the erasure of climate research and also this indiscriminate attack on the way that the science functions.

David Dickson: And we’re going to dive a lot more into what the potential data disruptions are going to be for the global community in just a moment. I’m curious because quite a few have expressed their questions in RSVP and also in that chat, what tips, story ideas or sources do you have for journalists who want to explore what NOAA layoffs impact their loan market and audiences? I think a part of the difficulty in this is we’re not sure exactly the extent of what these layoffs have meant, and that was partially due on purpose, but any tips or advice for reporters wanting to dive into what potential layoffs and what potential erasures of data mean for their local audience?

Gabrielle Canon: Absolutely. I feel like there’s obviously loads to cover here. There are also significant challenges. As you mentioned, we have had greater challenges even reaching the sources we’re used to being able to talk to. So I think one of the approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about obviously covering the firings themselves and looking at the gaps that are left behind, but also the ways in which these firings are happening. So one of the things I’ve been hearing from sources is that they don’t even have the correct titles on their dismissal letters. So I think there are lots of questions to be answered around who exactly was fired and why. And of course, we know at this point there was that first round of probationary employees, many of whom had worked with the agency for years and years, but had been promoted or it had been moved to different positions.

So looking at just the sweeping move of how these people were let go, I think is in itself a story, looking locally at your local agencies, local stations of who is now missing and what role they were providing. Beyond that, I think it’s also telling the story of these people themselves. I mean, these are dedicated civil servants who are now left without options. I’m hearing from folks who got fired just a couple of weeks ago who still haven’t even been given information about their healthcare or if they’re going to be able to file for unemployment. So there’s a lot of people out there and of course NOAA and across other agencies that are going to have local impacts because there’s just thousands and thousands of people now without jobs. Beyond that, I think it’s also going to be important to see how this work is going to continue.

So one of the things that I am personally really interested in is, sort of, if there is a why behind these sweeping cuts. I mean, obviously, Alan was mentioning a great deal of just the broad scope of the work that NOAA does, and so we know that there’s not really an argument to be made here that these are efficiency cuts. If they were efficiency cuts, we would see a much more surgical detailed approach to evaluating what is working at the agency, what is not working at the agency. That is not at all what has happened here. What has happened is an administration who seems to not really understand some of the roles that were being performed and how essential they are both to commerce and to public safety, not to mention global science and the response to the climate crisis. So asking the question of why is going to be incredibly important.

Obviously, we’re going to continue to cover what is happening as we move forward in time. If these positions aren’t reinstated, if we continue to have these cuts or if this reduction in force moves forward and we have 1,000 more people let go from NOAA, I think there is going to be a challenge to acclimate. So we’re going to be covering extreme weather, we’re going to be covering the storms, we’re going to be covering fires, and it’s really easy in that busy moment to just focus on what’s happening now. And I think it’s going to be incredibly essential as we move forward in time to try to identify the ways in which these cuts continue to have an impact again and again, and again because we aren’t going to be able to rely on that expertise that we once did.

David Dickson: Absolutely. A lot of this comes from, I wouldn’t say complacency, but just this is how it’s always been for a lot of our lives. We’ve been used to the services that National Weather Service and NOAA provides to us in our daily life, and it extends far beyond the forecast and far beyond just weather data. And to try to qualify this for efficiency, you’ve argued against that, but to also try to qualify these sort of firings or these layoffs in terms of cost-cutting also really doesn’t make sense as our fellow colleagues, including yourself, Alan, I think have explained just for the price of a cup of coffee for the average taxpayer, the National Weather Service provides economic benefits of over an estimated $100 billion.

I want to take a little bit of a journey now, back to last year. If we remember Hurricane Helene, it made headlines all across the world just the amount of devastation that it brought not only to coastal communities, but far inland communities as well, especially in Asheville, in the upstate of North and South Carolina. Last year, during this time, it took out briefly the headquarters for NCEI, the National Centers for Environmental Information, with climate data being made unavailable for an amount of time. This not only impacted research but also impacted some of what Climate Central did in terms of some of its attribution tools. Bernadette, with this in mind, how does a lapse in some NOAA weather or climate data have worldwide implications? And what are some other sources of data and other resources that journalists and newsrooms should be aware of in case more NOAA sites and more data goes down?

Bernadette Woods Placky: So thanks, David. I can get into that specific example in a moment, but to more broadly answer your question, I want to go back to something that Alan said about open access data. This is where NOAA is not only the world leader in collection processing offering of data, but it’s open access. There’s some wonderful data sets around the world. The EU does some great stuff. India has a great data set. It’s not always available, that’s the thing. And so to help people understand data a little bit better, so there’s the immediate collection of data that factors into a lot of immediate things with weather, which we started to touch on already. When you get into NCEI and some of the longer-term data sets, the climate data sets, we need big chunks of consistent good data to keep it valid. So you’re looking at 20, thirty-plus years consistently without a break.

Now, NOAA goes back way farther than that, but there’s a reason why there’s gaps in our really solid climate data sets in places in Africa and places in Asia where there have been unstable governments. And when you get that gap in the data, it invalidates the long-term data sets. It doesn’t mean that collecting data still doesn’t have value for some immediacy, but you can’t carry it with the same way to tease out longer-term trends to keep people safe and prepared on longer-term shifts that we’re seeing. And so NOAA provides the premier data set that is out there uninterrupted and open access, and that is a game-changer around the world.

And we’ll start to talk about some of the things here, but this for especially some of our global participants here, even focusing outside of the United States, where we’re going to see some of this play out is we offer that data and it’s very much fed into all of the research that goes into the IPCC, to the UN Climate Change negotiations, into the people that play key roles in that, and their own MET services around the world are able to access this information when they don’t have it themselves. And as you’re probably aware, it’s the people that are least prepared and most affected with the fewest resources that are going to get the impacts the most unfairly once again.

So already we’ve had, since all of this has been playing out, there has been a meeting for the IPCC next round. So they go through these big assessment reports at six to seven years is a massive process that is really long and complicated, but this data feeds into so much of it. And it’s not just our data, it’s our scientist representing the data to help interpret it, to give it context. And this isn’t NOAA, but this is NASA, our Chief Scientist, Kate Calvin, was one of the leads for this upcoming IPCC round, and she was not able to go to that scoping meeting for the IPCC. And so she’s not able to bring that data with her. Others can represent it, and they are, but she can’t give the context, the framing, and she is one of the top experts. It’s why she’s one of the leaders in this next round of the IPCC reports. So that’s just one example.

As we get into understanding attribution science in general, which is for those who don’t know, it’s a branch of climate science where we can go in and quantify the role of climate change within individual weather events, even within daily temperatures. And we can do that around the world because of good data. So without good data, we can’t always tease out those roles of climate change within individual events. And what that does is not only inform us of how things are changing and how we need to prepare for the future to keep people safe, but that’s not just here in the US. This is around the world, these governments and these communities that again, have way fewer resources than us and can’t privatize things the same way that the United States thinks it can.

And in that context, they have even fewer resources to help prepare for the future, and they don’t have the same infrastructure of support. For example, we have a drought here in the United States, I don’t know with this current situation, but we had systems in place to help support our farmers. I mean, it’s not enough, but it still helps them get through the season and get onto another season so that we have food availability that’s not the same thing in Africa, and they just don’t have food and then they suffer. And so if they don’t know how to prepare for the changes that we’re already facing, let alone what’s coming, we lead to no food. I mean, it’s that simple. So this is a very broad concept that we’re going to get more into here too, but the real guts of NOAA and a lot of our other US agencies that have really good data, NASA, EPA, DOE, USDA, they are in place to keep us safe and prepared, and without them we are less safe and less prepared.

David Dickson: I think one of our colleagues mentioned it before, and that’s how, one, this conversation isn’t new, there’s been conversations dating back into the mid-’90s of is it possible to privatize some of NOAA and the National Weather Service? It didn’t work back in 1994. It’s unlikely to work here again today. Bernadette, let’s go a little bit deeper. I personally have nightmares thinking about what the privatization of weather data and locking out weather data could mean for potential communities, not only globally, but here in the US as well. Whether that means paying for paid subscription tiers for certain types of data and forecasts, whether that means some data just isn’t available, what could privatization mean? And why is it a flawed thought for people to try to say, “We can just privatize NOAA?”

Bernadette Woods Placky: So there’s a lot of ways we can answer this. The first thing I’m going to take on is that, and Alan is representing the American Meteorological Society as the incoming President. We’re also lucky to have him. For those who don’t know, the American Meteorological Society, it is a really robust, wonderful collection of scientists and application in the weather, water, and climate community, not only in the United States, but globally. And there has been a lot of real intentional work done in this community to make sure we are strong together, we communicate together and we understand everything from the research through to the application, through to the communication. We even have a building communication branch with broadcasters. There are a lot of scientists that are jealous of our community because we have that full research to application built in. And the community itself, from the private sector to the government sector, to the NGO sector, to the academic sector, had done a focused work to work together.

And even in a lot of chats that I’m in right now, and I’m sure Alan’s been in these too, the private sector doesn’t want this privatized. They don’t, there are pieces of it they could see a benefit to, but the company that’s named often in Project 2025 is AccuWeather. And as soon as Project 2025 came out, AccuWeather came out with a statement that that is not the direction they want to go. They need open access data to succeed in their model. And the world needs a uniform sense of watches and warnings as the absolute basic. Now, there’s a lot more to it and to help people understand every single private weather company, and they really range in what they can do, but they’re taking that open access data, they’re feeding it into how it benefits their clients, whether it is a weather app, whether it’s a broadcast, whether it’s forecasting for an energy company or a commodities company or whatever it may be.

And then they can use it in the way they need and they can apply it to their specific client. And I’m just going to list a couple of things that I was brainstorming on around here of the things that we know because of NOAA data, we know when to put salt on roads, closed roads, closed schools, we know when to evacuate ahead of storms, fires, we know when not to evacuate, which is also really critical because that saves a lot of money and a lot of time. We know coming back to this, how to prepare our emergency services in evacuations and close areas. We know when to put up the barrier walls at hospitals as we saw last year with landfalling storms or coastal flooding that keeps people safe. We know what building codes to implement post a storm because of our research around our changing storms and the risks that they present.

This is how the insurance industry works through their catastrophe modeling and how to apply it to rates. We know when to cancel sporting events, when to shut down amusement park rides or clear a beach or a pool because of lightning. And that saves lives. We know when to shift sports practices, games, camps, that other times due to heat or severe storms. We know when to plant crops, when to harvest, what crops to plant with these migrating zones in our changing climate. We know when to protect plants for what would be a normally regular freeze after an abnormal warmup, which we’re seeing more and more in our changing climate. We know when to stay indoors with bad air quality, and we know the different population risks around that because of our research and application to it.

We know when to organize and prep line markers for the power outages for all seasons that we’re seeing. And so these are just a quick snapshot of the ways this plays out in regular lives, big and small. And then we should add the whole layer of innovation that’s happening right now with AI, which we’re right at the fringe of so much that’s going to come on the other side of it. And if we don’t have the smartest minds, we’re already working on this, applying this again to keeping people safe and prepared, then this is an area that we’re just not sure where that’s going to go.

David Dickson: And we’ll get to questions in a moment. And a lot of you put-

Bernadette Woods Placky: There’s a lot.

David Dickson: … great questions. I mean, there’s a lot to cover, but also there’s so much to highlight, Bernadette, just everything you just listed, absolutely. Just think of those as potential story beats for the reporters out there to explore, do a story on, I always say, “If you ever need to figure out a story idea, just ask a meteorologist and they’ll give you a list,” as we just said. A final question to the panel before we go into all your questions. Last week there were waves across the meteorological society when the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, as we call it, listed two buildings under NOAA Administration for lease termination, the Radar Operation Center In Oklahoma, as well as the Center for Climate Prediction in Maryland. The meteorologists immediately had red flags and alarm bells were going off, but for a lot of the public, they were like, “Okay. There are two buildings.” What are the potential impacts that could stem from the closure of these physical offices even just for a short amount of time? And is such a move even feasible?

Bernadette Woods Placky: David, can I jump in for a minute? I would love for Alan to take people through a severe weather situation. I mean, I’ve worked in severe weather markets myself. Alan has spent most of his career in one, so he’ll speak better to this. But for them to really go through what that looks like and why radars are so critical.

Alan Sealls: Okay. So start with the big picture. NOAA does the research to allow us to understand what causes specific types of weather, severe weather, winter weather, extreme heat, extreme cold. That research is ongoing. It is applied research, and at some point it’s put into practice as the method to figure out why or how you might have severe weather. From that, NOAA will issue, for example, an outlook up to eight days in advance, letting you know where the threat of severe weather is likely, which is based on historical data. A private meteorologist can do that as well. It’s hard when you don’t have all the resources that the government has. So from that outlook, then the local National Weather Service Offices will begin to focus more on that period of the threat.

When you get to that period of threat, it’s the local national weather services that will issue the warnings for whether it’s a winter storm or a tornado. And I have to back up, a branch of NOAA, the Storm Prediction Center will issue the watches. The watch means this is possible within this large area, everybody needs to be alert, at that point emergency managers and local communities are intently watching what’s going on literally as well as broadcasters from that point, then you go to a warning. A warning is issued by a local national Weather Service Office, which has pretty much a radius of coverage using a National Weather Service radar to pinpoint where the threats for severe weather are. While they’re doing that, most Weather Service Offices have an ongoing chat with local meteorologists broadcasts, emergency managers.

Even we have a lot of military bases here on the Gulf Coast military bases, and even any emergency manager, whether they are public or private. So this is a national weather service serving everybody in the community on an equal level. And then of course, when you get that warning, the warning is issued by the National Weather Service. It’s picked up by your local TV stations, NOAA Weather Radio, it is transmitted to your weather app. Doesn’t matter whose weather app you’re using, those are coming from the National Weather Service, just like the watches. And private companies do issue their own watches and warnings, but that causes confusion because it’s not consistent with the big picture. And then, Bernadette, did I answer the question yet? Was there another point?

Bernadette Woods Placky: No, I think it’s really good because we live this, so this is so normal to us-

Alan Sealls: Yes.

Bernadette Woods Placky: … but a lot of people don’t know what that situation looks like. And one other thing I’d just add is in the Weather Service Office, again, this is shift work. This is 24/7, and they have to overstaff during these severe situations because they have to have someone monitoring the radar, issuing the warnings, communicating with the public. So when there’s more weather, which we’re seeing more of in a change in climate, it requires actually more people. And for perspective, these Weather Service Offices were already understaffed going into this year big time. And so complete freeze, people who would help fill gaps even in volunteer situations with students during these off seasons, during school have been canceled. So we’re not only eroding this ability to keep people warned in these situations, but we’re eroding our future ability to train people. And so if, when, however we do catch up for this, we’re going to have a massive gap on the other side.

Alan Sealls: Yeah, and let me add one other thing. The other side of that severe weather scenario I showed you or talked about is after the severe weather, the National Weather Service goes out and surveys what happens using a uniform method so that way you can rank and categorize what the weather event was most importantly, so you could learn from it and then use it the next time and share that information with everybody else. So from beginning to end, the weather services there, I can personally tell you that these are dedicated, passionate people who, unlike some career jobs, when they go home, they don’t disconnect.

We are watching the weather because it’s a part of who we are and they of course care about their communities. I’ll also add that in broadcasting, I’ve been through layoffs and cutbacks. I’ve been on both sides where I was cut, I’ve been on the side where I was the survivor. And I can tell you, it makes a horrible working environment. It makes a place that becomes an assembly line where everyone’s working harder with a greater possibility of overlooking something or failing to do something that needs to be done. So those are some of the practical concerns of the weather service cutting NOAA.

Gabrielle Canon: And I wanted to add too on that, I mean, that’s such an important point, and we think about just the chaos that’s happening at NOAA happening across these other agencies and the disruption to some of the systems that are essential and in place already. And so you think about if you’re losing your colleagues, if you’re having to go to a different place of business, you’re given different instructions, you’re having to change your workflow, it’s going to add disruptions. And of course, that’s not even considering the fact that they’re having less resources, less staffing, as Alan mentioned, it’s putting more pressure on each person, but even just the very idea of these really severe swift changes happening with very little feedback from leadership, very little instruction, and a lot of fear frankly. So people are having to report to their jobs in a completely different way in changes that we’ve not seen ever before. I mean, even as we can expect with each new administration, there will obviously be shifts, but this is something that is completely different from what folks have already experienced.

David Dickson: We’ve talked a lot today primarily about weather and climate, but as we head into the Q&A session of this webinar, I just want to remind everyone, and it’s something that Alan said at the very beginning, NOAA is not just the National Weather Service. NOAA is an umbrella that covers so many things from our oceans, our atmosphere, even out in space. So with that, I’m going to go ahead and open it up to you all with a question coming to you from Benjamin Payne, from Georgia Public Broadcasting. How do the recent NOAA cuts impact the agency’s work in coastal communities, including in Georgia mentioning right whale conservation, oyster farming, commercial fisheries. Anyone want to tackle that first?

Alan Sealls: I’ll jump in with an answer that’s not really an answer, and that is every question about how will this impact, the answer is unknown. We don’t know. This has never happened before. And that’s not to dismiss the importance of the questions, but everything right now is speculation. There was a really good question as I was reading them as well. I’ll find it again in a bit. Let me flip that though. Questions about talking to people who can give you more insight into what’s happening within NOAA. There are very few employees, current federal employees who can say anything publicly. My advice is seek out those who are recently retired, and specifically if you’re talking about the National Weather Service, go to the website weather.gov, which is the National Weather Service website.

If you’re a reporter, click on where you live and it’ll bring up the local National Weather Service Forecast office. At the bottom of that page is a phone number. So weather.gov, click on the map, your local Weather Service Office phone number, call them, ask number one, is anyone willing to talk? And the answer will probably be no. But then ask, is there any retiree you can recommend or someone who left NOAA who can talk? And I’m pretty certain they’re going to try to connect you with someone who can tell their story. So that’s a tip for a lot of the comments.

Bernadette Woods Placky: A good addition to that, Alan, is on the larger scale. Some of the previous NOAA employees have been fired, have been pretty open and accessible. So Tom Di Liberto is one of those, he’s very open to interviews, can get people connected if you’re looking for it. Also, the last NOAA administrator, Rick Spinrad, Dr. Spinrad, has really come out boldly and he would likely do interviews, so I don’t want to offer up all of his time, but I think he’s worth contacting if you can.

Alan Sealls: You’ll find him on LinkedIn. A lot of folks are on LinkedIn.

David Dickson: Gabrielle, I have a question aimed for you, just again, while we’re seeing the overwhelming majority of these people that had been laid off, fired, not being offered their roles back. We just saw some reports today that a few of the hurricane hunters, these people that fly into hurricanes to gather valuable data, have actually been reinstated with the agency. Have you explored that some of these people have been asked back or this whiplash of being fired and then asked to return or explored the legality of such firings for these probationary employees?

Gabrielle Canon: Yeah, I mean, it’s a great question because we’ve seen this not just at NOAA, but at other agencies. So the USDA just came out and said, “Oh, just kidding. We’re going to bring back all of our probationary employees that we fired and everything’s going to be fine. We’ll have that for 45 days and we’ll do more of an assessment.” And then of course, we’ve seen sort of this piecemeal, “Oh, oopsies, we fired someone who was really important and we’ll bring them back.” I mean, what this undercuts is just that the chaos that these federal agencies are experiencing. So even if someone were to lose their job and then eventually bring it back, I mean, you’re having that disruption. There’s still a lot of uncertainty. I mean, people even in these departments don’t know across their workflow like who is missing and who is there. We have a lot of numbers that aren’t adding up.

We’re hearing from the administration that X number were let go and then brought back or whatever. It’s really challenging to actually check that. And so I think when you have a lot of this back-and-forth, it’s creating a system that, A, makes it really challenging for journalists to accurately tell the story and to really see who is missing at the end of all of this. But then even for folks who are getting their jobs back, it is difficult to just have that disruption in your life and in your workflow and to pick up where you left off, especially when there’s a lot of uncertainty about whether or not that’s actually going to stick. And I think Bernadette brought this up, it is creating a culture where we’re losing this generation of young scientists and people who are once so excited to take these jobs and to seek out these jobs.

It’s creating a culture of fear where people don’t necessarily want to come back or are uncertain about if they should take these offers and deals. And so I think ultimately right now, I mean, regardless of whether or not we’re able to get some of these positions reinstated, I mean, the actions themselves are going to cause just rippling effects through the work that we all depend on. And I think it’s also important to consistently try to fact check or to verify what the administration is saying. I mean, we’ve seen this throughout the last few months where we’ll get certain statements or numbers or specifics that end up not being accurate. So as we start to hear people coming back or people getting their jobs back or the fact that some of these were performance issues, whatever it is, like I think it’s going to be so essential to make sure that that’s actually what’s happened and that’s actually what’s true, and trying to get as broad a perspective as possible on what the implications of those initial firings are, and whether or not ultimately through the courts or through the agencies themselves, they’re reinstated.

Bernadette Woods Placky: David, one extra point to that, if you don’t mind, I just want people to really understand what’s at risk in this too, in that back-and-forth is this is when we prepare for hurricane season right now. So this is when we do maintenance on the current planes. This is when there is the potential for getting new planes. That was in a previous bill, IRA bill, I think, don’t quote me on that, but there was some money somewhere for new planes. And so this is when that happens, this is when the training happens, this is when everything gets ready so that when we have the risks that will come, we have a really amazing force of people that are willing to fly into hurricanes to collect data, to feed it into our weather models, to oversample where there is a storm, to see if the storm is getting stronger, if it’s getting weaker, if it’s changed direction, if the pressure has dropped or increased, because that leads to the strength that we measure through a storm.

They also get these new drones that they have out in the water, and that they can move around and sample around a storm in the water. So this is when all of that is getting ready because we’ve had some very early seasons to the Atlantic hurricane season in the past few years. Again, warming waters, changing planet, higher risks, but officially it starts June 1st for the Atlantic hurricane season. The Pacific is the middle of May, and so there’s not much time between then and now to get all of that ready, and we’re disrupting that.

David Dickson: We’ve had a few questions, including from NBC’s climate team and some others in coastal communities wanting to potentially explore. Again, we’re in uncharted territory, uncharted waters, but what potential disruptions we could see as we head into this Atlantic hurricane season? I think a couple of things to note as we head into hurricane season is one, the preparation. Preparation does not start June 1st, even as we head towards the peak of hurricane season, which is in the fall. Other things I think that is impactful, we saw this earlier this year, not so much for the National Hurricane Center, but it was advice given to others within NOAA. I believe within the fisheries was to cease external communications with other international agencies.

And what we do know as meteorologists is that the National Hurricane Center does not specifically cater to just us. The ocean has no borders in it, it provides resources as well as forecasts for the number of countries. I believe it’s around 40, 45 countries that fall within the Atlantic Basin. Now, it’s up to the individual countries to offer their own forecasts and evacuations dependent on that. But I guess, can we go in a little bit more detail about what are the, again, ocean-wide implications of such disruptions as we head into this hurricane season?

Alan Sealls: I’ll jump in with that one, and it’s about sharing. If NOAA is unable to share data and forecast information with neighboring countries, stop and realize that tropical storms typically come through neighboring countries before they get to the US. So in the worst political case, these other countries can say, “Hey, well, we’re not going to tell you what’s happening. We’re not going to give you the pressure when the storm passes over our country,” which means our forecasts’ data input could deteriorate simply because what was a two-way partnership now becomes very lopsided. So that’s my concern there, aside from just the fact that we’re all human beings and a practical standpoint is if you truly are only concerned about your country, our country, people are scattered in other countries. So that’s why you deal with humanity rather than just looking at the political border. Again, a bunch of comments. One of them that I wanted to address was, oh, common question I’ve seen on social media, “Well, the government’s too big, let’s just cut it.”

And there’s no argument, I think from anyone that an agency, a company can be trimmed, it can be streamlined, it can be made more efficient, but what we are not seeing is a plan of how you’re going to do it and a plan of what the outcome is going to be, and this is why there’s mystery as to what all of this will mean and how far and how deep the potential threats can go. Another thing I wanted to mention, I teach a broadcast course in meteorology here in mobile, and my students who are all mostly meteorology majors, they are very concerned about their potential professional futures. These are talented, way smarter than I was when I was a college student. Very talented, passionate kids who one day could become NOAA employees, but from what’s going on right now, it’s creating an environment where people are to start thinking about that as a career, and that’s one thing we don’t want at all. The other argument back to which I hear on social media is, “Well, we can just privatize it.”

I think back to how much I pay for my cable TV bill and the fact that I’m given packages that I don’t want and what I really want, I’m paying a lot more. So my concern there is if you weather, weather data, it means the ability to protect people, and for people to be aware, and to be as prepared as they can be will depend upon their income because poor people cannot afford to pay huge amounts for something that should be equally available to all people within the United States. So that’s my argument against privatization other than there are some practical hurdles, something as simple as data, proprietary data where if one company collects data and they put it in a format that no one else can use or read, it’s worthless to the rest of the world. Right now, NOAA maintains standards that are set a lot in part by the World Meteorological Organization. So those are all the benefits that NOAA and the Weather Service are bringing us.

David Dickson: I have another question. One coming from Carolyn Jones at TAPinto Princeton, as well as some others sharing a similar sentiment, and this might be best suit for you, Gabrielle. Any tips in connecting with whether it’s federal officials that are still a part of these agencies or recently laid off officials that may not wish to be, I guess, a target essentially of more feedback and more abuse, and any potential tips that you can give to draw less attention, negative attention towards these vulnerable federal employees that may be wanting to speak out whether they’re still a part of the organization or not?

Gabrielle Canon: Yeah. I mean, this is incredibly important. I mean, ultimately it’s essential that we connect, and we get that information, and that we’re able to get a full picture of not only what happened during these firings, but what’s continuing to happen. And so for me, my approach has really been assuring people that they don’t have to necessarily go on the record, and then you just can have as many people as possible that you connect with and speak with. I’m so sorry. It looks like maybe I’m frozen. Am I good? Okay.

Bernadette Woods Placky: We got you. We got you.

Gabrielle Canon: Okay. Great. Anyways, what was I saying? Yeah, I think ultimately it’s a priority to ensure that the people who speak to you, the people who are sharing this information, aren’t going to regret it or be victimized by it. And so if you have enough people that you can speak to and source information from, then you can really rely on those recently retired folks to give you good quotes to flesh out what your story is while you use the background from the folks that aren’t necessarily going to be able to put their face or in their name in the public. The other source that I’ve really been really appreciative of is people like Daniel Swain, who are very vocal, who are accessible and trying to communicate a lot of the issues that they’re seeing in their own network. So you can look at other academics, people who are connected to scientists both working at the agency and who have been laid off.

These are really strong networks of people, and so if you start with the folks who are able to go on record, who are able to speak out publicly or have a little bit more of a cushion to take some of those risks in sharing that information, then I think it gives you the ability to provide some cover for the folks who aren’t. Obviously, this is a really delicate time and a delicate situation. The information is really important, but the people who are giving that information are equally important, and so it’s essential to make sure that they don’t suffer the repercussions of sharing information with us.

And I think one of the other areas here is just the idea of going back to some of the privatization issues and some of the ways in which we can try to get those messages out. So one of the things I’ve been hearing from folks again and again is that they’re feeling like they’re being set up to fail, and so I think if we can continue to tell those stories, if we can continue to get that information about the types of pressures that they’re under and the ways in which these agencies are being affected, and then we can try to get ahead of that narrative of if this function is not performing in the future, it’s because of these cuts and not because this agency is not functional.

David Dickson: As we head into the last minutes of this webinar, I’d like to ask each of the panelists kind of an elevator pitch, which goes back to our core tenet. Why do we need NOAA now more than ever? And what should we highlight about the importance of NOAA? We’ll start with you, Alan.

Alan Sealls: Okay. The simplest answer is if you take away climate change, if you take away changes in the atmosphere, the population is growing. We have never been as weather-sensitive as we are now, and we will only become more weather-sensitive. NOAA ensures whether it’s ocean or atmosphere, that we are able to make the best decisions, that are wise decisions to help us live safer, live longer, and live smarter.

David Dickson: Bernadette?

Bernadette Woods Placky: So much to say. I’ll try to be succinct here. I know we’re running out of time. To me, it always comes back to keeping people safe and prepared. We’re talking about the value of NOAA, but this can be applied to so many of our federal agencies and their workers that their work, their data, the employees who do the work, their real goal is to keep us safe and prepared and as the world’s leading source of open access, weather and climate information. This is really critical. One thing I want to bring in is this full chain because we didn’t fully get into this. Just to summarize it, it’s from the data collection. The balloon launches, the flying into hurricanes.

We didn’t talk a ton about oceans either. It’s the buoys, and the ships, and the information they’re collecting as they go across the ocean to the interpretation of that data, and that requires human input, then that gets fed into modeling so we can look into the future and it’s why we can now accurately keep people safe from changing storms over a week ahead of time. It’s the research so we can continue to innovate and advance AI, advance the next thing that’s coming this way, and it’s really through to the communication, and NOAA is a part of that emergency management chain in some really big ways.

David Dickson: Very quickly, Gabriel.

Gabrielle Canon: All right, I’ll keep it fast. As journalists covering the climate crisis, it’s our job to help people make sense of what is happening around them, both now and what we can expect into the future, and we are losing the essential sources, the folks who are providing the context, providing the background, and helping us understand what these risks are and what we can do about them. We’re also losing the people who are keeping that neutral, grounded information. We’re being forced to rely on more sources that are biased or people who have specific objectives, and rather than focusing on the science and the people who are producing it, that is I think, one of the biggest losses we will see.

David Dickson: Thank you again to all of our panelists today. I hope you’ll all join me in thanking not only Alan Sealls, Gabrielle Canon, as well as Bernadette Woods Placky. Their expertise and their insights have truly, truly been much appreciated. This is only the start, and this is likely going to be a huge part of the climate story, the weather story. Even as we move into the future and as we move into spring severe weather season, and hurricane season, and upcoming alerts, I encourage you to stay updated, whether that’s signing up for our newsletters that Covering Climate Now, Climate Central, and exploring the resources available and the insights from the American Meteorological Society, I’d like to thank all of them in particular for their collaboration on this very important topic.

As we wrap up, once again, I encourage you to continue to build your climate knowledge, and research, and do effective climate reporting. You can find more information to do so on our website, coveringclimatenow.org. We’ll continue to cover this topic as we move forward, as this will likely continue to be a growing concern. Thank you again for all of us from joining us today and have a great rest of your week.