Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios
The Trump administration is considering deep cuts to NOAA while seeking to end much of its climate change work, according to an internal document seen by Axios.
Why it matters: The proposal, if Congress enacts it, would squash some of the nation's premier climate change research programs.
- It also reveals how the administration may try to maneuver to realign agencies without going through Congress.
Driving the news: The "passback" document — an early part of the process for drawing up the president's annual budget — proposes to cut NOAA's overall budget by nearly $1.7 billion to $4.5 billion.
- It suggests eliminating the NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research as a line office and cutting most of its budget to about $171 million.
- That would include cutting "all funding for climate, weather, and ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes," says the document, which was provided by multiple sources and reviewed by Democratic staff on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
Between the lines: Eliminating those programs would jeopardize universities studying climate and earth systems in partnership with NOAA, one of the world's top climate change research agencies.
- It could shutter key research sites like the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the Global Monitoring Laboratory.
- What's left of OAR — primarily tornado and weather research and ocean observation — would be reprogrammed to other offices.
- The effect would be to refocus NOAA on weather forecasting, but experts say that's tied intimately to climate research.
The Trump administration is eyeing similar science cuts at NASA, the Washington Post reported.
- Proposed cutbacks of NASA science by 47% "would halt the development of nearly every future science project at NASA, wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer funds already spent on these projects," the Planetary Society said in a Friday statement.
Yes, but: The NOAA document is labeled "pre-decisional" and is subject to change.
- It essentially shows what the White House Office of Management and Budget wants to do with NOAA and the Commerce Department.
- NOAA, Commerce and the White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The other side: House Science Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren said in a statement she will "do everything I can to stand in the way of this idiotic plan."
- "The White House seems to think that our science capabilities operate in vacuums from one another," she said. "That is not the case. It's a holistic system, and each piece of the agency is critical to strengthening the accuracy of weather forecasting and data, and then providing that data to the people who need it."
The president's budget is historically dead on arrival on the Hill, and whatever the administration ultimately proposes, lawmakers are likely to stave off at least some of the cuts.
- But the landscape is different in Trump 2.0, and Republicans in charge of Congress have been mostly unwilling to push back on proposed cuts publicly.
- The document also notes some areas in which "the Department should act now to align existing resources and activities to the direction of the Passback," including "unsustainable costs" in NOAA's satellite acquisition programs.
Zoom in: The document also proposes to roughly halve the budget of the National Ocean Service to $334 million.
- The National Marine Fisheries Service would get a more than $300 million cut.
- And it proposes to move the Space Weather Prediction Center from NOAA to the Department of Homeland Security.
