Staff cuts and a freeze on international collaborations at a leading US science agency will have a “chilling effect” on climate science and may “severely degrade” Australia’s ability to accurately forecast the weather, scientists have warned.
The Trump administration fired 880 workers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) on 27 February, and reportedly plans to cut 1,000 more staff.
Australian meteorologists and scientists rely on Noaa data and software for both operational weather forecasting and long-term predictions of the climate, with collaborations between the two countries dating back decades.
Atmospheric data from Noaa satellites informs the Bureau of Meteorology’s weather forecasts, as part of an international agreement through the World Meteorological Organization. Prof David Karoly, a decorated scientist and climate councillor with the Climate Council, said: “That is used by essentially all countries around the world, not just Australia.”
Noaa satellites provide the BoM with timely sea surface temperature (SST) observations, which are crucial for making El Niño and La Niña forecasts.
Dr Helen Beggs, a senior research scientist who retired from the BoM last week, said any significant decrease in Noaa funding “may well reduce the availability of accurate SST observations for operational and climate applications both globally and in seas surrounding Australia”.
Although the BoM also relies on Japanese and European satellite data, Noaa’s satellites provide the most accurate and spatially detailed SST data the bureau uses operationally, Beggs said.
Noaa is also the main contributor to a global network of ocean observing platforms, including the Argo program of about 3,600 floats that record temperature and salinity in the world’s oceans. Cuts affecting that SST observation network “would result in gaps not just for Australia, but also the world,” Beggs said.
A BoM spokesperson said “no changes in specific policy direction or advice have been received from the bureau’s partner agencies in the US”.
Another important source of data comes from the Noaa-operated Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, which has continuously provided daily images of sea ice concentration in the Arctic and Antarctic since 1978. While other nations operate similar satellites, none other provides calibrated data over four decades.
Dr Alex Fraser, a remote sensing specialist at the Australian Antarctic Program, described the polar satellites as an “absolutely crucial dataset for us”.
“It’s a cornerstone of our monitoring and research and it’s provided in near-real time,” he said, adding that the extent of research and monitoring conducted by Noaa was “staggering”.
“Between Nasa and Noaa, if we were to lose the capabilities of one or both of them, we’d be in a pretty dark place literally and figuratively, not knowing what’s going on with the Earth,” he said. “Given the extremely wide range of crucial work that’s going on right now, it’s hard not to feel a little anxious about the future.”
Australian scientists also have close ties to Noaa in developing and using climate models to predict future changes. They warn that further cuts to Noaa would affect Australia’s own ability to deliver climate projections and Antarctic simulations.
Australia’s climate simulator, known as Access-NRI, relies on components made by US government departments, including an ocean model known as Mom, which was developed by Noaa’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).
A collaboration between the BoM, the CSIRO, and four Australian universities, Access-NRI software is used by climate and ocean researchers across Australia.
Prof Nathan Bindoff, the program leader for the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, said the ocean model was “critical to the Australian national interest”.
‘Chilling effect’
Ocean models such as Mom allow scientists to predict future changes in ocean temperature and currents, yielding better projections for sea level rises and how much heat and carbon the oceans will absorb.
“This is a chilling effect on the whole of climate science,” Bindoff said of the Noaa cuts. “Science is normally entirely about providing the facts, tracking the planet, trying to explain why it’s changing.”
“It reminds me of the dark ages in medieval times – it’s a suppression of knowledge,” Bindoff said.
Prof Andy Hogg, Access-NRI’s director, described the US as “the powerhouse” of climate modelling. “If they lose capability, that’ll be to the global detriment,” he said.
However, Dr Adele Morrison, an oceanographer at the Australian National University, noted the Mom model was “constantly being developed” and improved, and any suspension to that process would be “a huge upset” for Australian scientists. “We don’t have enough capacity in Australia to develop our own ocean model, so we’re always going to be dependent on one of these larger international labs or consortiums,” she said.
“Currently we’re working with [Noaa] to add in ice shelf cavity capability, looking at the little bits of ocean that sit underneath the ice shelves at the edges of Antarctica. These haven’t been in our models so far, and without the scientists and software engineers at GFDL, that new development just won’t happen.
“In the short term, we’d still be able to move forward using the model that we have,” Morrison said. But were Noaa’s contribution to stop, “it wouldn’t take too many years” before developments in different international models rendered Mom obsolete, she said.
Jan Zika, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales who worked on Mom6 – the latest iteration of the model – during a four-month fellowship at Noaa in 2023, expressed similar concern. “What keeps me up at night … is there are a small handful of people that actually have the ability to translate what they’ve done into something that everybody else can run.”
Zika has received correspondence from Noaa colleagues “warning us not to communicate about sensitive issues via their institutional email”.
“There’s a sense that if the wrong things are being said about the administration, even in tone, that could be detrimental to them,” he said.
Prof Christian Jakob described the Noaa cuts as “a very sad and difficult situation for all the people involved”. Jakob directs the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, of which Noaa’s GFDL is a formal partner. “Their role is to help us develop a next-generation modelling system for Australia, because we are using their ocean model,” he said.
Noaa staff have been informed that all international collaborations are suspended unless officially approved. Correspondence from a Noaa scientist, seen by Guardian Australia, suggests the GFDL is waiting for confirmation it can continue collaborating with Jakob’s centre.
‘The climate is global’
“One big driver of weather and climate research is to improve the systems we use to make predictions,” Jakob said, citing Cyclone Alfred and the role of accurate weather forecasts in preparing communities days in advance.
“These predictions and the research to improve them is a really international enterprise, in which so far we’ve openly shared information, models, data, software, tools. It’s actually the only way this could ever work, because the weather is global, and the climate is global,” he said.
“You can’t just take a piece out – it will severely degrade the quality of the predictions. Everybody benefits from this arrangement, including the US.”
On Tuesday, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society warned that the recent cuts “would affect public safety and the economy – not just in Australia but across the world”.
In a statement, it cautioned against “altering governmental roles and responsibilities for monitoring and forecasting the atmosphere and oceans”.
“The atmosphere and oceans are globally connected and do not recognise political boundaries.”
