DOGE moves to cancel NOAA leases on key weather buildings

• It was designed to integrate multiple forecasting centers in one building to improve operating efficiency. It houses telecommunications equipment to send weather data and forecasts across the U.S. and abroad.

Driving the news: The NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction is on the lease cancellation list, according to a NOAA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

• Two ex-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials also confirmed the list.
• The building houses the National Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, or NCEP, which includes the Environmental Modeling Center. It opened in 2012 and has about 268,000 square feet of space.
• The modeling center runs the computer models used in day-to-day weather forecasting, and ensures that weather data correctly goes into these models and that they are operating correctly.

The lease cancellation was first reported by The Verge. The National Weather Service didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

• The NOAA employee told Axios the cancellations — along with recent layoffs, early retirements, and travel and hiring limitations — point to an effort to dismantle the agency.

The other side: A senior White House official told Axios on Tuesday that for NOAA, the administration is "simply reevaluating the lease terms, not closing any building, which any good steward of money would do."

• The official stressed that no formal lease-cancellation letter has been sent to NOAA. The official acknowledged that DOGE is canceling leases at other government agencies, but said NOAA is an exception.

Between the lines: Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been working through the General Services Administration to cancel government leases of office space.

• The NOAA employee told Axios a nightmare scenario could unfold if the College Park building was shuttered, but the agency still was tasked with the same missions as at present.
• In that case, NOAA would have to somehow replicate its functionality somewhere else in a process that could take a year or more and leave critical forecasting gaps.
• It would also require new congressional appropriations to get that done.

The intrigue: The cancellation notice for the College Park facility isn't final, as a spreadsheet detailing all the properties on the cancellation list has an end date of "TBD" for that building, according to the NOAA staff member.

• Another building on the list, which came to NOAA by way of GSA, now has an end date of Sept. 30, 2025.
• That facility in Norman, Okla. is the Radar Operations Center, a centralized hub for technicians and researchers to work on improving and repairing the nation's aging fleet of Doppler weather radars.

The DOGE website has a section on canceled or modified government real estate properties. It shows several NOAA facilities, though not the exact building in College Park as of Monday.

• In addition to the National Weather Service-related properties, numerous buildings on the so-called "wet side" of NOAA are on the list the agency received, including the National Marine Fisheries Service.

What they're saying: Andrew Rosenberg, a former NOAA official on the agency's fisheries side, has seen the cancellation list. He likened the College Park situation to cutting the government via a "chainsaw" approach rather than more fully considered cuts.

• Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told Axios he hadn't heard anything final about NOAA buildings in Maryland.
• "I am worried," he told Axios after speaking at a rally Monday outside NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Md.
• "We know they're looking through GSA," he said of DOGE. "We should be concerned and worry about all these things, which is why the sooner we shut down the efforts to illegally get rid of federal employees the better."

Van Hollen said his staff will look into the College Park facility in particular. He already has sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seeking answers following the NOAA cuts of probationary employees last week.

• His office put the total of those layoffs to 650 out of NOAA's approximately 12,000-person workforce.

What's next: NOAA, like other government agencies, has been told to plan for even deeper cuts.

Go deeper:

Top weather, climate agency NOAA the latest layoff target

NOAA layoffs threaten weather, climate forecasts

DOGE plans for NOAA, FEMA could have big climate impacts

Editor's note: This story is updated with comments from the White House.