Trump administration officials recommend the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by the New York Times and several people knowing the situation.
The proposal of the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office of the NOAA, one of the first Earth Sciences Research Centers in the world.
A budgetary allowance of just over $ 170 million, against around $ 485 million in 2024, was going to vary the sciences as varied such as early alert systems for natural disasters, teaching student sciences from kindergarten to high school and the Arctic study, where temperatures have increased Almost four times faster than the rest of the planet Over the past four decades.
“At this level of funding, Oar is eliminated as a line office,” said the proposal.
The programs that have retained funding, including research on tornado warnings and acidification of the oceans, would be relocated to the offices of the National Weather Service and the National Ocean Service.
The Outline for the 2026 Budget Passback, Which Would Need To Be Approved by Congress, Suggests “meaningful discounts to Education, Grants, Research, and Climate-Related Programs Within Noaa” and comes After the dismantling of other agencies like the National Institute of Health and the United States Agency Development, and the Elimination of climate change mentions Federal websites.
Under the proposal, the total budget of the Commerce Department would be nearly $ 7.7 billion, a reduction of more than $ 2.5 billion compared to the levels of 2025. According to the document, the budget would further refocus activities in accordance with the Trump administration agenda, including the application of commercial laws and the collection of scientific observations such as data on the ocean and the weather to support forecasts.
“The hostility of this administration towards research and the rejection of climate science will have the consequence of eviscing the capacities of weather forecast that this plan claims to preserve,” said representative Zoe Lofgren, the main democrat of the Chamber of Chamber Committee, in a statement sent by email.
The NOAA, which occupies more than half of the budget of the trade department, would receive just over $ 4.4 billion, a reduction of $ 1.6 billion compared to 2025.
“It’s not surprising, but it’s very disturbing,” said Rick Spinrad, who led the Noaa under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
This includes the reduction of the National Marine Fisheries Budget Service of a third party. The office would be divided from the Noaa and moved to the American fish and fauna department of the interior department. The subsidies which finance the recovery of species and the conservation of the habitat would be eliminated.
The funding of the National Ocean Service, a NOAA branch, would be reduced in two. Programs like the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, an office within the ocean service that studies corals, pollution and the effect of climate change and elevation of sea level on coastal communities, would not be funded.
The national environmental information centers, which archives on climate data, would lose a quarter of its funding.
The proposal would also modify the satellite and space programs of the NOAA.
He would empty the Office of Space Commerce and move the center of spatial meteorological prediction to the Ministry of Internal Security. A program called a traffic coordination system for space which was to regain surveillance of satellite traffic from the Ministry of Defense, a kind of traffic police for space, would also lose funding. The passback suggests having such a work by the private sector.
The satellite program which provides data for forecasts and meteorological modeling would also be reduced. The long -standing relationship that helps the NOAA to acquire satellites through NASA would also be terminated.
Dr. Spinrad said that the probability that this budget, as proposed by the White House, adopts the congress was low. “I don’t think it will resist control of the congress.”
The Passback is part of the balance of the federal budget, according to the document, which includes “the elimination of federal government support for awakened ideology”.
Project 2025, a document which was used as a plan for a redesign of the federal government under the Trump administration, included a goal of breaking the NOAA and reducing its research arm.
“This raises the question, did the Trump administration intentionally break our weather forecast capacities as an excuse to carry out the dangerous proposal for the 2025 project to privatize the meteorological service?” Ms. Lofgren said in a statement.
Project 2025, which was published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization of research on policies, called Noaa Research “the source of a large part of the climate alarism of the Noaa” and said that “the preponderance of its research on climate change should be dissolved”.
“This would bring the United States in the 1950s into technical and scientific skills,” said Craig McLean, chief scientist of the NOAA under the first Trump presidency and President Biden, of the proposed budget.
Alexandra McCandless, spokesperson for the OMB, said that “no final financing decision has been made”.
The agency has until noon on April 15 to call on the proposal. And he has until April 24 to submit plans for many of the revisions that the passes suggest, even before the proposal was approached by the Congress.
Thursday, employees of the probationary government who had been dismissed in February, then reinstated by a judge, received an email from the Ministry of Commerce who again pulled them After the decision was canceled by a higher court. A so-called reduction in the plan of strength could reduce An additional 20% of his workforce In the coming weeks.