NOAA Grapples with Disruptions as Federal Contracts Lapse
April 9, 2025 – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a cornerstone of U.S. weather forecasting and climate research, is facing significant operational disruptions as several key federal contracts have lapsed or narrowly avoided termination. These setbacks, tied to a broader push by the Trump administration to slash government spending, have raised alarms among scientists, lawmakers, and the public about the agency’s ability to deliver critical services.
The turmoil began escalating earlier this year when the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, mandated that all contracts exceeding $100,000 be personally approved by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. This directive, part of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, has slowed NOAA’s operations to a crawl. A notable casualty was the contract with Lilt, an AI company providing translations of National Weather Service (NWS) emergency alerts into languages like Spanish, which expired on April 1, 2025. The lapse has halted automated translations, leaving non-English-speaking communities vulnerable as spring storm season intensifies.
Another near-miss involved NOAA’s cloud services contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS), set to expire on April 4. The cancellation threatened to take down websites and data portals under NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), including vital climate and weather research datasets. After a last-minute scramble, the contract was extended to July 31, 2025, averting immediate disaster but leaving the agency in a precarious limbo. “We were hours away from losing access to critical tools,” said a NOAA staffer, speaking anonymously due to fear of retribution. “It’s triage mode every day now.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service is also reeling, with contracts for routine services at risk, potentially disrupting updates to fish catch limits—an essential function for sustainable fisheries management. Meanwhile, a contract supporting NWS communications narrowly avoided lapsing last week, a close call that could have crippled alerts during recent extreme weather across the Midwest and East.
Staffing woes compound the chaos. Over 1,000 NOAA employees have been fired or resigned since January, with another 1,000 potentially facing cuts. While 791 probationary workers were recently reinstated in a “paid, non-duty” status following a legal challenge, the uncertainty persists as the case remains under appeal. “We’re hemorrhaging expertise at a time we can least afford it,” warned Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy director of NOAA’s fisheries service.
Critics argue that the disruptions threaten public safety and economic stability. Oregon lawmakers, for instance, have highlighted risks to the state’s NOAA Marine Operations Center-Pacific, a hub for West Coast research ships. Democrats and former NOAA staff have protested outside the agency’s Maryland headquarters, decrying what they call “incompetent chaos” driven by DOGE’s aggressive cost-cutting.
The Commerce Department defends the reviews as necessary to eliminate waste, but insiders say the process lacks foresight. “They’re cutting without understanding what these contracts do,” a NOAA employee told NPR. The AWS extension buys time, but with no clear plan to renegotiate or replace these services, NOAA’s ability to monitor weather, manage fisheries, and track climate change hangs in the balance. As one scientist put it, “This isn’t efficiency—it’s dismantling a system we all rely on.”
