How Could the Weather Service Change Under Trump?

As President Trump issues rapid-fire executive orders intended to drastically reduce the federal work force and dismantle several agencies, many federal employees are left wondering what the future holds.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency with wide-ranging responsibilities that include disentangling whales from fishing nets off Alaska, gathering satellite data on wildfires in California and issuing tornado warnings in Kansas, one question of many that remain unanswered is: What will happen to the National Weather Service?

Mr. Trump has not yet described his plans for NOAA, whose research is considered essential to the study of climate change, or for the Weather Service, of which it is a part. But this week, staff members participating in Elon Musk’s efforts to downsize the government arrived at the agency, as they have at several others since Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Many of the Trump administration’s early actions have followed a blueprint set out by Project 2025, a policy blueprint created by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The 900-page document, published in 2023, envisioned a significantly pared down federal government, and it may offer clues to the fate of the Weather Service.

But first, some history.

It started with some shipwrecks.

The first national meteorological service in the United States was established in response to tragedy. Across just two years, 1868 and 1869, more than 500 people were killed and more than 3,000 vessels sunk or damaged, many by storms, on the Great Lakes, according to “A Century of Weather Service,” a history of the agency by Patrick Hughes.

By February 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant, pushed by calls for a storm warning system, formally established the country’s first meteorological service as part of the U.S. Army.

This service was part of the Department of Agriculture and later moved to the Department of Commerce. In 1970, the National Weather Service was officially established when President Richard Nixon created NOAA, aimed at providing “better protection of life and property from natural hazards,” within Commerce.

Since then, Congress has considered restructuring NOAA and its offices, which besides the Weather Service include the National Ocean Service; Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research; National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service; National Marine Fisheries Service; and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations. Congress has also considered moving NOAA to another department or making it an independent agency.

And for several decades, conservatives in the pursuit of free market goals have advocated increasing the role of the private sector in American weather forecasting.

How a forecast works now

Today, the Weather Service is a dispersed operation. Many of its more than 4,000 employees work from 122 forecast offices across the country, where they continuously monitor local conditions, issue multiple daily forecasts and release warnings ahead of dangerous weather.

Its staff also operates some additional offices with a specialized remit, including one that is tasked with monitoring flooding, units that advise air traffic controllers, and the National Hurricane Center.

By its own estimate, the Weather Service collects over six billion weather observations a day. To create a forecast, a meteorologist at a local office may analyze some of those data points, consult weather models and make judgments based on expertise.

But the service’s mission goes beyond forecasting. In April 2011, after a large — and accurately predicted — tornado outbreak killed more than 300 people across the South, the department began providing advice to emergency agencies and public officials. It started telling people what to do with the information its forecasts were providing.

Rob Dale, the deputy emergency manager for Ingham County, Mich., works closely with the Weather Service. “Michigan State University’s in our jurisdiction, and they send a meteorologist out to every football game here, just to monitor the lightning threat or severe weather threat,” Mr. Dale said. “There’s someone right in the room as we go through the decision-making process.”

The Weather Service provides its forecasts and warnings to the public free of charge. NOAA’s observational data, from the agency’s vast network of satellites, buoys, weather balloons and sensors, is also available at no cost; companies like AccuWeather, Google and Apple use it to power their weather products.

The Weather Service estimates that its services cost every American resident $4 per year.

How the Weather Service could change

The chapter of the Project 2025 document that includes proposals for NOAA describes the agency as a “colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” and calls for it to be “broken up and downsized.”

It proposes that the Weather Service focus on its data-gathering services and “fully commercialize” its forecasting operations.

Mr. Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, a billionaire Wall Street executive, told senators during his confirmation hearing in late January that he did not agree with Project 2025’s proposal to dismantle NOAA and eliminate many of its functions. He also said, during questioning from Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, that he would maintain the Weather Service.

But in the same exchange with Ms. Klobuchar, Mr. Lutnick also appeared to allow for the possibility that the private sector could take up the forecasts that have traditionally been Weather Service work. “I think we can deliver the product more efficiently and less expensively, dramatically less expensively,” he said, “but the outcome of delivering those services should not be changed.”

The Weather Service during Mr. Trump’s first term

Mr. Trump has shown a preference for the private sector when it comes to weather. During his first term, he nominated Barry Myers, the former chief executive of AccuWeather, one of the nation’s largest private weather forecasters, to lead NOAA.

Mr. Myers remained unconfirmed by the Senate for more than two years. He withdrew from the process in 2019, criticizing Democrats who had voiced concerns over his possible conflicts of interest.

(In a statement last year, AccuWeather appeared to distance itself from Project 2025’s proposal to fully privatize the weather system. “AccuWeather does not agree with the view, and AccuWeather has not suggested, that the National Weather Service (NWS) should fully commercialize its operations,” its chief executive, Steven R. Smith, said. The public-private partnership approach in forecasting “has saved countless lives,” he said.)

Mr. Trump’s influence on the Weather Service was felt elsewhere during his first term. In a 2019 episode that came to be known as “Sharpiegate,” Mr. Trump was at odds with government meteorologists over the forecast for Hurricane Dorian. After he included Alabama on a list of states that he claimed would be hit by the storm, a Weather Service office in Birmingham clarified on social media that the hurricane would not affect the state. Days later, during a news briefing, Mr. Trump brandished an illustration of the storm’s path that had been altered with a thick black marker to include Alabama.

Bowing to pressure, Neil Jacobs, then NOAA’s acting administrator, issued a statement that supported Mr. Trump’s assertions and criticized the Alabama forecasters for their post. An investigation found Dr. Jacobs had violated the agency’s policy for scientific integrity in issuing the statement.

This week, Mr. Trump nominated Dr. Jacobs to the post of NOAA administrator again.

The future of weather

If confirmed, Dr. Jacobs would lead NOAA at a time when the balance of its public-private partnership may already be in flux. Studies show extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense as a result of climate change. At the same time, weather models driven by artificial intelligence have demonstrated an ability to produce forecasts that are more accurate than traditional weather models.

A crop of private companies that use A.I. to build their forecasts is leading the charge to adopt the technology more widely. Companies are now increasingly operating their own weather observation instruments, though many also still use NOAA data. In recent years, NOAA, too, has begun supplementing the data it collects with data purchased from the private sector.

In Michigan, Mr. Dale worries that commercializing the Weather Service’s forecasting could set up a pay-to-play system for lifesaving warnings. “If someone says, ‘Hey, if you want a tornado warning for your county, you’re going to have to pay us, $100,000 a year,’ that’s just not viable,” he said. There’s no spare money in most county budgets these days to do something like that.”

Louis Uccellini, who was the Weather Service director between 2013 and 2022 and described himself as “one of the biggest supporters” of the private sector’s role in weather, said he believed not all the department’s work could be successfully contracted out. “Public service is not measured by the bottom line,” he said, “but by how well we serve society with the resources allocated by Congress.”