Trump administration wants to close down key weather labs nationwide

The National Severe Storms Laboratory sits on a campus of radar equipment and office buildings at the University of Oklahoma, off State Highway 9 in Norman. It’s responsible for radar breakthroughs in forecasting that the nation relies on for storm warnings and emergency preparedness.

But the Trump administration wants to shut it down, prompting a rare rebuke from a prominent Republican member of Congress.

“I want to make sure that whoever’s proposing this actually goes down there and looks at it and meets them,” said Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, chair of the Appropriations Committee. “I’ve allowed things in my district to be closed before, but this is a national asset, and I want to be very careful about what we do with it.”

The Trump administration is looking to make sweeping cuts at the nation’s weather agencies, including the closure of all federally funded meteorology labs, such as the National Severe Storms Laboratory. They’re facilities that experts credit for research that has saved countless lives; the deadly flooding in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend underscored just how crucial it is to have adequate warning systems in place to anticipate natural disasters.

These facilities also support local economies. According to the University of Oklahoma, the federal lab in Norman helps sustain more than 900 jobs in the region.

But the lab in Oklahoma is one of more than 10 weather and oceanographic laboratories listed for termination in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s request for funding next year, part of much larger cuts requested by the Trump administration. If approved by Congress, NOAA would receive just $4.5 billion in funding next year, meaning it would have $2 billion less and 12,000 fewer personnel to support studying and forecasting weather events.

An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson said in a written statement that the budget request provides ample funding for NOAA, and that it refocuses the agency on its core mission and streamlines operations. The spokesperson also pointed to some research divisions getting consolidated into National Weather Service offices.

“NOAA will continue critical work and research that supports navigation, weather forecasting, commercial fisheries, etc., while terminating funds spent on left-wing Green New Scam activities masquerading as science,” the spokesperson said.

Rep. Tom Cole

But Cole isn’t the only Oklahoman pushing back on the NSSL’s potential closure.

A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said in a written statement that the NSSL’s closure would be a setback to storm warning innovation and emergency preparedness, and that getting rid of it threatens the future of storm warning innovation that keeps communities safe year after year.

Norman’s Chamber of Commerce President Scott Martin, a former state House Republican, also said its loss would be devastating for the community and its local economy.

And that Oklahoma lab is just one of the over two dozen research labs and institutes the Trump administration wants to stop supporting.

“There are just so many key pieces of the forecast puzzle that came out of these places, and out of these people who are going to be let go, so that’s really disturbing that we’re willing to give all that up,” said James Franklin, who served as the National Hurricane Center chief until 2017.

Franklin added the loss of federal support would not only cripple meteorological science if the federal government moves forward with these cuts, but set it back decades.

“It’s hard to imagine what the next 25 years would look like if they all went away,” he said.

If the proposal is approved, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA’s research arm, would be dismantled. That would mean four research labs in Boulder, Colorado, would close, along with the Air Resources Laboratory, headquartered in Maryland, which studies pollution and helps officials make decisions about whether to issue stay-at-home orders when air quality decreases.

The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, Florida, is also a possible cut. Experts there interpret essential real-time data collected from NOAA’s aerial hurricane-monitoring operations that significantly improve hurricane modeling. And, like the NSSL, the AOML partners with local and state researchers.

Rick Spinrad, the former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Joe Biden, said the loss of the AOML would put a lot of people in harm’s way because teams there help monitor hurricane tracks and intensity.

But NOAA’s proposal drew another concern from Spinrad. Industries and state emergency preparedness officials alike rely on NWS forecasts to make decisions, he argued, so less accurate models would cause unnecessary economic losses, likely much more than any of these proposed cuts would save.

“The weather service is about a billion dollars a year endeavor, and every year, we’re seeing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of damage from natural disasters,” Spinrad said. “There have been many economic studies, and every one of them shows a dramatic return on investment.”

These research labs run programs that have been bolstered by years of bipartisan support from Congress. The last weather bill, which passed with simple voice votes in both chambers, provided funds for NOAA to prioritize weather research to improve weather data, modeling, computing, forecasts, and warnings for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. Trump signed it into law in April 2017.

Still, it’s up to Congress to build the budget based on NOAA’s request. Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska, who proposed legislation last month to allow NWS to fix its understaffing issues, said he wasn’t too worried about Congress approving the proposal as-is. He said in a written statement that the proposals from the administration are just suggestions.

“I have faith the House Appropriations Committee will prioritize public safety as they craft budget bills for the upcoming year,” Flood said.