Weather and climate panelists discussed cuts to NWS, NOAA

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MANAGING EDITOR

Weather and climate panelists discussed cuts to the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other departments Thursday.

As part of KGOU’s Oklahoma Future Forums, in coordination with StateImpact Oklahoma, Kelli Pirtle, Renee McPherson and Alan Gerard spoke about the federal changes, funding cuts and their concerns for the future of weather services Thursday at Yellow Dog Coffee Company.

Pirtle worked as a public affairs specialist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for more than 25 years before taking a retirement option earlier this year during DOGE cuts. Gerard, who also took the retirement option, worked at the National Weather Service and National Severe Storms Laboratory for 35 years. McPherson is the University Director of the South Central Climate Adaption Science Center, a professor of geography and environmental sustainability at the University of Oklahoma and an author on the National Climate Assessment.

NWS, NOAA and other weather organizations have faced a plethora of changes and challenges since President Donald Trump took office in January. The Department of Commerce fired probationary employees, budget proposals are projected to cut around 25% of NOAA’s budget, eliminating its research branch, and withheld money for climate related research grants.

Pirtle said the current administration is quite different from other administrations, specially in regards to its impact on NOAA and NWS.

“Throughout my 26 years in that

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Alan Gerard, Renee McPherson and Kelli Pirtle discussed cuts to the National Weather Servive, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other changes Thursday during a panel hosted by KGOU and StateImpact.

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job, there was very little impact from different administrations,” Pirtle said. “It’s unlike anything I’ve seen and starting in January, our jobs changed drastically and, so far, permanently, as far as the attitude of how we were treated as federal employees, as well as how we could do our jobs… I try not to be hyperbolic here, but it’s been disruptive. I’s been dehumanizing. It has been baffling and frankly, dangerous for our community and for our state and for our nation. Never before have we been frightened of being fired for the least little thing. Never before have we been afraid that our organization would disappear in a week. What we all fear is that the important research involved with the organizations in Norman will stop.”

McPherson said the funding decisions made in Washington D.C. will not stop severe weather events from taking place, adding that the atmosphere follows physics and chemistry. The only thing the funding cuts will change is how well people can prepare and respond to severe weather events.

With the loss of and endowment of funding, McPherson said a lot of colleagues have chosen to leave the National Weather Service and NSSL.

“What we’re losing is a wealth of experience,” McPherson said. “We’re losing people who are training up the next generation. We’re also losing the next generation because many of the people who lost their jobs are in their early careers.”

McPherson said she knew of an intern at NWS who always dreamed of being a meteorologist and with NWS but lost his internship when the position was cut earlier this year. She said his future in this career field in “very unsure” and can be said for a lot of people working in the weather industry.

One requirement to get a PhD or masters degree in a physical science, such as meteorology, is conducting research with more senior sciences. Gerard said the partnership between the federal government, NOAA, NWS and OU offers students the ability to meet this requirement. He added that these research project often have findings that improve forecasting of tornadoes, flash floods and severe weather.

“Even though I’m retired, my understanding from talking to people… Is that coming into this academic year, OU lost about 20% of the normal of amount of graduate students that they would have in a given year because of either actual funding cuts or uncertainty about federal funding going forward,” Gerard said.

The National Severe Storms Laboratory has been located in Norman for over 60 years, studying weather radar, tornadoes, flash floods, lightning, damaging winds and more. Pirtle listed three examples of search that would be lost is the NSSL shut down — radar research, War-on-Forcast, and field research.

She said there are radar systems used around the world that were developed in Norman and as it ages, researchers are working to develop me ways to use the current radar and looking at the radar if the future.

“If we lost the funding here, we would be stuck with old — functioning now, yes —, but old technology and no way to improve it,” Pirtle said.

Under the current administration, McPherson said the latest National Climate Assessment, mandated by Congress under the Global Change Research Act and signed by President Richard Nixon, has been removed from the website that hosted it.

She said this document, which took two years to write, provides data to back ups and provides an understanding on the impact of eliminate change, including climate variability and possible responses and how to adopt and mitigate climate change. McPherson said this document is used internally by the federal government and hundreds, if not thousands of communities use it for local planning.

“The data that we collect through the National Climate Assessment, much of it provided through NOAA or other federal partners, is critical to keeping these assessments relevant,” McPherson said. “When we lose all that, we lose the ability to think about events like the Texas Hill Country flooding.”

McPherson said it’s possible that Oklahoma could experience floods similar to what Texas experienced earlier this year.

“There are landscapes in Oklahoma that are similar to Texas Hill Country. We will get heavy rainfall that will be as intense, if not more intense, than the events in Texas Hill country. It will happen somewhere in Oklahoma,” McPherson said. “So what we risk when we remove these types of very highly peer reviewed is we remove the ability for communities, for tribes, for neighborhood associations to prepare and be ready for these types of events when the National Weather Service tells us we need to implement our action plans.”

Gerard said this is the first time these offices have not be able to operate 24 hours a day, adding that the cuts to these departments were implemented in a “very haphazard way.”

“iI we lose NOAA research, at a minimum nothing’s gonna get any better and at the worst case, things are gonna start going backwards,” said Gerard.

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