NOAA Climate Scientist Fired by DOGE: Firings Across NOAA Will Make Hurricane Season Impacts Even Worse

EXCERPT:

DI LIBERTO: “So, they were firing at the Aircraft Operations Center at NOAA in Lakeland, Florida. That's where the hurricane hunters are. I believe the flight director was fired from AOC. There were technicians fired, people who are engineers as well. So we know every single year, sometimes those hurricane airplanes sometimes break down or need a replacement part. That's going to be harder to fix now. We have less people to do that. We don't have the ability necessary to fly all the planes 24/7 as we did before. We're also looking at, just in general, more stress on the National Weather Service, who are the folks who make these forecasts. And we know there are firings across -- weather forecast offices across the United States, across the Gulf of Mexico as well. So basically, you're taking a situation that's already fraught. Hurricane season, that's so important. We always see the impacts of this every single year. And now you're saying, 'Oh, let's tinker with this.' That's a horrible idea. In no world does that make anybody safer.”