Eight days after layoffs began at NOAA, the real-world effects of downsizing the world's premier weather and climate agency are coming into focus.

Why it matters: The agency is wrestling with gaps in its ability to warn people of life-threatening extreme weather events, from tornadoes to hurricanes.

Zoom in: Due to a combination of cuts and a hiring freeze, the agency may not be able to maintain its typical pace of Hurricane Hunter research flights, which are so crucial to improving storm track and intensity forecasts, during the 2025 hurricane season.

• In addition, strains exist at the forecast offices of NOAA's National Weather Service, where senior meteorologists took the early retirement offer and many early career forecasters who were probationary employees were laid off.
• This will force more overtime shifts for technical experts at an agency that went into the cuts already short-staffed.

The backbone of the nation's public and private sector weather forecasting operations is also threatened.

• A critical forecast center in College Park, Md., and a Doppler radar research and repair center in Oklahoma landed on a lease termination list handed down from the General Services Administration.

State of play: The threat to the Maryland facility — the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction — has lessened somewhat, according to one NOAA source and a former agency official, who each requested anonymity due to concerns about retribution.

• The lease termination process has been paused, they told Axios, though the building isn't off the list just yet.
• The facility is the nerve center for U.S. weather forecasting, and private companies as well as other countries also rely on the observational and computer model data generated and transmitted from there.

The intrigue: The cuts to NOAA are likely to hamstring the agency's fleet of hurricane research aircraft, experts warn.

• NOAA's aircraft have specialized equipment that the Air Force's Hurricane Hunters lack. Their flights during hurricane season are aimed at feeding data into computer models to improve forecast accuracy.
• The now-thinly staffed team of flight directors, engineers, scientists and mechanics means NOAA will struggle to maintain a 24-hour-a-day tempo of flying its modified Gulfstream jet and aging WP-3 research aircraft, said Josh Ripp, who was laid off as a flight engineer because he was a probationary employee.
• Ripp said the missing flights will translate into less accurate forecasts and greater risk for coastal residents who are used to having at least two to three days' warning of a hurricane's predicted landfall location.

What's next: These were only the first round of cuts to NOAA, with even deeper reductions anticipated in the coming months.

• How heavily those fall on the weather side of the oceans and atmosphere agency will help determine how reliable weather and climate forecasts will be.

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A whirlwind day for LNG exporter Venture Global blended financial warning signs and strong political support from President Trump's top lieutenants.

Why it matters: Venture has aggressive expansion plans as Trump looks to supercharge shipments from the U.S., already the largest global LNG exporter.

📻 Driving the news: The newly public company's share price slid sharply to its lowest level since it began trading Jan. 24.

• Yesterday's 36% drop followed earnings that missed analyst estimates, revealing lower profits compared to Q4 2023.
• And it raised cost estimates for its Plaquemines Parish project in Louisiana, which has begun shipments but remains under construction (ht/Reuters).

Yes, but: Venture got a vote of confidence from Trump 2.0, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum giving remarks at Plaquemines.

• The speeches followed Venture's announcement of plans for a $18 billion expansion of the project's capacity, though a final decision is a couple years off.
• CEO Mike Sabel, introducing the secretaries, said it's "one of the best regulatory and policy environments in decades" under the new regime.

👀 What's next: Sabel told analysts on Venture's earnings call that they expect DOE approval for exports from the proposed CP2 project in the "near term."

• It's the project at the center of wider political and legal battles over LNG, its geopolitical benefits, and climate effects.

⚾ Important inside baseball: Congressional analysts say Republicans can't use a special filibuster-proof resolution to kill California auto emissions rules that are tougher than federal standards.

• Why it matters: The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office take complicates GOP plans to quickly end EPA's waivers using the Congressional Review Act.
• Driving the news: GAO, in an opinion that Democrats requested, says these Clean Air Act waivers are not formal "rules" that can be overturned via the CRA. Resolutions under the law are powerful because they can clear the Senate with a simple majority.

🛑 Via the Financial Times, the U.S. is bailing on multinational Just Energy Transition Partnerships aimed at financing efforts in Indonesia, Vietnam and South Africa to move away from coal.

⚛️ The Trump administration appears to have reversed DOGE's attempt to close an office overseeing the country's only permanent repository for nuclear waste, according to New Mexico lawmakers. Pro Energy Policy has more.

Tesla is at risk of bleeding cash in the first quarter of 2025 amid growing signs that CEO Elon Musk's political endeavors are scaring off potential customers.

🔍 What we're watching: Q1 sales are "tracking weak" with estimated deliveries heading toward a decline of more than 4%, according to Evercore ISI analyst Chris McNally.

• At that rate — and with Tesla's heavy spending on automation and robotics — analysts say the company is at risk of going negative free cash flow, McNally noted.

Between the lines: Taking a page out of the traditional automotive playbook, Tesla has been offering incentives to juice sales, including 0% financing deals.

• "Tesla is offering nearly all the tricks in the book and [then] some" to juice sales, Ivan Drury, analyst at car research site Edmunds, tells Axios.
• Those include low APRs, lease incentives, upfront cash discounts and free supercharging, he notes.

Yes, but: Tesla has the potential to juice revenue from a few new areas on the horizon.

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📊 Fully electric vehicles were 7.6% of new U.S. auto sales last month, per Wards' Infobank and Deutsche Bank Research, a slight dip from January.

• Why it matters: On a total volume basis, sales of roughly 95,000 vehicles were 15% higher year-over-year last month, outperforming the overall industry.
• State of play: Plug-in hybrids were another 1.8% of the market in February but fell in volume.

🔋 The International Energy Agency has a nice new primer on the global battery industry and China's outsized footprint.

• Why it matters: The industry is "entering a new phase of its development," IEA analysts write. They point to metrics like annual demand surpassing 1 terawatt-hour last year.

🤝 VW's new mass-market EV concept — the ID. EVERY1 — will be its first model using Rivian software since the multibillion-dollar tie-up between the auto giant and U.S. startup.

• Why it matters: VW is aiming for a sales price of around 20,000 Euros ($21,600-ish at today's rates). It comes amid growing competition with China for low-cost models.
• What's next: The vehicle arrives in 2027, but current plans call for only a European launch. TechCrunch first reported the Rivian news and has more on the car.

"Even for US-focused investors, our conversations around natural gas increasingly have a global dynamic. The swaying potential for a peace deal bringing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to an end, the prospect of Russian gas flowing to Europe, US tariffs on Europe, and the potential for additional US LNG deals swirl around the long-term potential for gas."