Trump officials fire 800 employees at weather forecasting and oceans agency

Signage outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Weather and Climate Prediction headquarters in College Park, Maryland, on December 5. Around 800 NOAA employees have been tapped for termination.

The Trump administration has its government-shrinking sights set on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where around 800 employees have been tapped for termination, according to two sources close to the agency.

More layoffs are possible Friday, one of the sources said, potentially costing the weather, climate and environmental agency more than a thousand employees by the end of the week.

Most divisions of the agency, which employs scientists and specialists in weather, oceans, biodiversity, climate and other research and planetary monitoring fields, were affected.

Probationary employees — those who have been in their jobs for a year or less, in most cases — were fired Thursday, a person inside the U.S. National Weather Service told CNN. There are between 350 and 375 employees with that status at the weather service, though it’s not clear how many of those were impacted; the person has heard there were some exemptions given to critical positions — likely life-threatening disaster forecasting roles, including hurricanes and severe thunderstorms.

National Weather Service employees are protected by a workers’ union, which was trying Thursday night to contact affected employees. Some employees who were fired said on social media that they were going to explore their legal options.

The people who were charged with conducting the terminations seemed to have acted in a way that would minimize paper trails, a source close to NOAA said, making it difficult for others at the agency to know who was affected and leaving news of the firings to spread by word of mouth.

The terminated NOAA workers’ letters said, “The Agency finds you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency’s current needs.”

Many probationary workers at some federal agencies who were laid off earlier this month received letters that also said they were being let go because their performance has not been adequate to justify further employment – regardless of whether they had good reviews.

‘Protect lives and property’

The National Weather Service’s mission is to “protect lives and property.”

The terminations are a blow to an agency that has been understaffed for years, even as the climate crisis accelerates and extreme weather becomes more frequent. Critics of the administration’s plan to slash the agency — a directive that was outlined in Project 2025 — have said layoffs would further cripple America’s ability to accurately forecast hurricanes, tornadoes and other costly, deadly extreme weather.

Meteorologists and computer engineers across NOAA were impacted, including at the Hurricane Research Division, where employees work to increase the accuracy of hurricane forecasts. Andrew Hazelton, a researcher with a PhD in meteorology, was one of the employees terminated Thursday, he said on social media. His role was to evaluate hurricane forecasts and improve the physics in the models that the National hurricane Center uses to track the storms.

“I enjoy meteorology because weather affects everyone, and there’s always so much to learn,” Hazelton is quoted as saying in his NOAA bio. “Growing up in Florida, I experienced several hurricanes, and it thrills me to be able to study and analyze them in my career.”

Other departments in which roles were terminated include the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, and the division that develops and improves the United States’ weather models.

Zachary Labe was one such modeler that was terminated.

“My job was to strengthen NOAA’s use of machine learning and AI for subseasonal-to-decadal weather and climate prediction,” Labe said on X.

CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty contributed to this report.

Ella Nilsen and Tami Luhby, CNN