“Lives are being put in danger,” one meteorologist warned, as some experts feared the cuts will harm public safety.
Twice a day for years, meteorologists in Kotzebue, Alaska, have launched weather balloons far into the sky to measure data like wind speed, humidity and temperature, and translated the information the balloons sent back into weather forecasts and models. It’s a ritual repeated at dozens of weather stations around the United States.
On Thursday morning, the National Weather Service, which for years has struggled with worker shortages around the country, announced that it had “indefinitely suspended” the launches from Kotzebue because of a lack of staffing.
Hours later, word of mass layoffs began to spread at the Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. More than 800 people were expected to lose their jobs, the latest cuts in the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reshape the federal work force. As they have elsewhere, the cuts appeared to have been focused on probationary employees who are easier to dismiss.
Though not entirely unexpected, the terminations were shocking to employees of the Weather Service, the government agency responsible for issuing warnings, generating daily forecasts, advising local authorities and collecting the weather data that make these functions possible. The news provoked swift condemnation from people in the field, some lawmakers and the public.
Kayla Besong, a scientist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, a part of the Weather Service, said she had hoped her status as an “essential” employee — which required her to continue working without pay in the event of a government shutdown — would mean her job would be spared.
But on Thursday, Dr. Besong, who had begun her role in September, received a termination notice. She said her bosses at the warning center, which monitors earthquake and ocean data around the clock to prepare for possible tsunamis, did not appear to have received advance notice. “I have been waiting for that email for what feels like four weeks,” Dr. Besong said.