Nearly two dozen scientists based at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s Virginia Key offices were laid off Thursday in the latest round of federal firings, a direct hit to hurricane research and fisheries management vital to protecting U.S. shores, sources said.
The layoffs ordered by the Trump administration are part of a reduction in force aimed at an agency created by Richard Nixon in the 1970s that now has offices spread across the country.
About 22 probationary staffers at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab and southeast fisheries office were fired, gutting a class of young scientists or newly promoted staffers who had already put in years of service working to improve hurricane forecasting and better manage valuable ocean resources, including coral reefs. About 16 fired scientists worked in fisheries and a half dozen on hurricanes, sources said.
Nationwide, more than 600 employees were laid off in emails sent Thursday, former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press conference Friday, with every NOAA office across the country hit.
“It’s hard to make a full assessment of the damage given that there is no rhyme or reason,” said one source, who asked not to be named for fear of backlash. “These are the rising stars, the people really giving government the biggest bang for the buck.”
For many, the termination emails that arrived Thursday ended weeks of agonizing speculation.
“A couple of weeks went by and we were thinking we might be spared,” said Andy Hazelton, a meteorologist who was among those fired. “NOAA put in some exemptions because of public safety, but it seems those were not honored at my level.”
Hazelton, who has four young kids, said working for NOAA had been a lifelong goal. He flew repeated missions aboard NOAA’s hurricane hunter planes and focused his research on one of the most pressing concerns: hurricanes that intensify suddenly, giving little warning to the public and emergency managers.
“I grew up in Lakeland and Plant City and experienced a lot of hurricanes, so doing modeling and working for NOAA was really a dream,” he said.
While Hazelton was a new federal employee, he’d already been working for NOAA for eight years. During college at Florida State University, he volunteered at the Tampa office for the National Weather Service and then volunteered again at the Virginia Key AOML lab while he was completing his masters degree.
After finishing his PhD, Hazelton dove into work at the Virginia Key lab, where he helped develop a next generation hurricane forecasting model as part of partnership between NOAA and the University of Miami.
The research done by Hazelton and others has helped dramatically improve hurricane forecasts in a remarkably short amount of time, allowing forecasters to now better understand when those short fuse storms might explode and make landfalls more lethal.
With the cuts, that progress will go away, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator.
”Any of the progress that has been made over the last several years, including in reducing the errors in the track forecast of hurricanes, reducing the errors in the intensity forecast, I think it's safe to say that that will be compromised,” he said.
While hurricanes get the most attention here in South Florida, Spinrad said other far-reaching impacts are likely, from delayed seasonal forecasts for farmers to navigation issues for commercial shipping and space weather forecasts that protect GPS satellites.
”Any of the progress that has been made over the last several years, including in reducing the errors in the track forecast of hurricanes, reducing the errors in the intensity forecast, I think it's safe to say that that will be compromised." Former NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad.
“ I suspect we'll start to see isolated products delivered on a less frequent schedule simply because if you don't have the people, you can't be turning out these products on a regular basis,” he said.
“That erosion will undoubtedly start immediately because these people are gone. They're not leaving a month from now or two months from now. They're gone now.”
While legal cases are popping up in court — a California federal judge on Thursday said the mass firings were likely illegal — Spinrad and others worry that the government is losing talent that will be hard to recruit again.
”They're watching and they're saying, 'I'm not sure I want to take a job in the federal government,'” he said. “ It's going to take years, years for NOAA to recover the trust of the next generation of brilliant environmental scientists.”
Others worry about the research being done in the public’s interest.
”There's a real concern that we could end up with a dearth of independent research that ultimately benefits the public,” said Elise Bennett, a senior attorney covering Florida and the Caribbean for the Center for Biological Diversity. The center often relies on government data to fight its cases to protect endangered species.
“It's an attack on every source of independent research and study that ultimately benefits the public,” she said. “Whether the outcome is inconvenient to hear or not, that's how we inform making better decisions for all of us.”
Hazelton, who recently received a glowing performance review, said he’d love to return to his government job, but not with so much uncertainty looming.
“If the stability is back, I would definitely go back because I really enjoyed serving the public,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done and I really want to be a part of it. I just hope the indiscriminate attacks go away.”
This story has been updated to clarify the NOAA offices located on Virginia Key.
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