Summary
The Trump administration has fired hundreds of employees at NOAA, the U.S.’s top climate research agency, affecting probationary workers, a categorization that applies to new hires or those moved or promoted into new positions.
Critics, including NOAA veterans and lawmakers, call the move “cruel” and warn it endangers weather forecasting, climate research, and public safety.
Senator Chris Van Hollen deemed the mass firings illegal, while scientists and policymakers condemned the decision.
Former NOAA officials argue the cuts lack justification and will harm national security and disaster preparedness. The administration has not commented.
AccuWeather has been working on this since 2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act_of_2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather
On October 12, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee Myers, the younger brother of the company’s founder, to head the National Weather Service’s parent administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was noted that unlike 11 of the previous 12 NOAA administrators, Myers lacks an advanced scientific degree, instead holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business and law.[37] Barry Myers stepped down as CEO of AccuWeather on January 1, 2019, and completely divested himself of any ownership of AccuWeather in accordance with his pledge to the Office of Government Ethics and the U.S. Senate. After two years of inaction on the nomination, Myers withdrew his consideration for nomination on November 12, 2019, due to ill health,[38] though allegations of a hostile workplace and pervasive sexual harassment while Myers was at AccuWeather are rumored to have stalled it.[39][40] Myers sent a letter to The Washington Post in 2019 to address these allegations.
Huh.
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Well crap. Knew it was coming but still.
Anyone know of a good weather service that doesn’t rely on NOAA?
None of them.
There are private companies that run a lot of their own independent forecasting models e.g AccuWeather, but all of them almost exclusively rely on NOAA’s scientific models, experimental tests, weather balloons, satellites, sensor stations, etc for input data to forecast anything useful.
Yeah. Even if they employ their own meteorologists, they’re still interpreting the maps and imagery from government satellites and weather stations. You take those away, and AccuWeather can’t afford to stay in business.
The Norwegian Meteorological Institute has good data and a great data sharing policy:
We have a free and open data policy, which means that anyone may use our material freely and for benefit of society.
Fun fact: They are the default weather data provider for Home Assistant!
But that work only if the USA share its data freely to others… and of course Trump asked 2 weeks ago these agency to stop doing that.
He’s still pissed that they didn’t back him up on the Sharpie hurricane line, isn’t he?
It’s part of the project 2025 plan to privatize weather forecasting.
I hope this doesn’t affect the aviation weather services, we are going to see even more crashes and near misses
Don’t worry, it’ll all be handled by Grok soon.
The worst timeline indeed
Right at the start of tornado season. Wonderful.
climate
changedenial
