Trump’s weather plans endanger Iowans. Congress must stop him. | Opinion

Slashing NOAA is perhaps the clearest example of Trump’s insistence on loosening the lug nuts on the country’s tires and seeing what happens.

• Resisting these cuts vigorously should be an easy call for Iowa’s senators and representatives.
• Existing cuts are already making meteorologists’ jobs harder.
• Privatizing forecasting would create perverse incentives.

The ubiquity of weather, and weather forecasting, in our lives makes it easy to overlook how far meteorology has come. Temperature predictions are usually right on the nose a day or two out. School officials can judge whether wintry conditions are amenable to school without waiting until dawn to peer outside. Radar can pick up flying debris as evidence of a tornado. 

The Trump administration wants to flush most of the federal government’s weather- and climate-change-related research and data down the drain. This would freeze in place or unravel our ability to understand and predict what’s happening and what’s ahead — all in service of relative pennies of savings, and based on myths that private companies can do what the National Weather Service does and that climate change researchers are malicious liars.

When a powerful EF4 tornado struck Greenfield in central Iowa last spring, National Weather Service meteorologists in Johnston had over an hour of lead time to warn residents about the extremely high risk in that location. The storm killed five people, a toll that could have been worse without their prompt tornado warnings.

President Donald Trump needs Congress’ approval for his proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, of which the National Weather Service is a part, to take effect. Resisting the cuts vigorously, preserving progress in protecting lives and property, and aiding farmers should be an easy call for Iowa’s senators and representatives.

More: How do the most recent Iowa tornadoes compare to the state’s deadliest storms?

Earlier cuts are already making meteorologists’ jobs harder

The administration’s proposal would take away more than a quarter of NOAA’s funding, singling out for demise much of its research capability, according to the New York Times. The plan would nominally preserve some data collection. But mass firings already are curtailing those services, most visibly with the reduction of weather balloon launches throughout the country. That change has repercussions for everybody, said Chris Gloninger, the former KCCI-TV chief meteorologist who departed in 2023 after he said he received threats about his on-air reporting on climate change.

“The fact that there are no more balloon launches in the farthest west point in Alaska affects what’s happening in central Iowa, especially when it comes to severe weather,” Gloninger said in an interview. He now works as a climate scientist on the East Coast. Data collected in Alaska, or in Omaha, which also has suspended balloon launches, would have helped to sharpen models just as much as measurements in Iowa.

“Not only does accuracy wane, but so does the institution that is really the gold standard of public weather forecasting globally,” Gloninger said.

The proposed cuts would make things worse — not just for scientists losing their jobs, but for all of us trying to make informed decisions in our personal and professional lives. It’s almost too generous to call the administration’s ideas “penny-wise, pound-foolish” — particularly efforts that have been narrowly averted to delete gobs of climate data.

Estimates on the return on investment for NOAA vary, but it’s widely recognized that the United States derives benefits far exceeding its spending.

Privatizing forecasting would create perverse incentives

That the White House would pursue this direction has been obvious for years. The Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term called for spending on “the climate change alarm industry” to be abolished and for the private sector to take over many National Weather Service tasks.

Congress should stand up to the administration’s willful blindness about climate change — and to its ignorance about how meteorology works, which might be an easier sell to Republicans, including Rep. Zach Nunn, who represents tornado-devastated Greenfield, or Rep. Randy Feenstra, whose northwest Iowa district suffered severe flooding in 2024.

“Why wreck something that isn’t broken? Why wreck something that provides an incredible public service?” Gloninger said. Even setting aside that private forecasters rely on National Weather Service data, leaving the entirety of weather information to private actors would set up the possibility of perverse marketing incentives that aren’t compatible with sound science, Gloninger said.  

“I’m fearful of the day where the private sector tries to compete to be ‘the most extended forecast.’ ‘The earliest tornado warning.’ That will kill the science, the credibility that’s been built up over the decades,” he said.

The beginnings of NOAA trace to 1807, under President Thomas Jefferson. The current incarnation was largely proposed by President Richard Nixon and affirmed by Congress. Nixon was no big spender or lover of big government, but he saw the value of this particular public service.

Slashing NOAA is perhaps the clearest example of Trump’s insistence on loosening the lug nuts on the country’s tires and seeing what happens. Iowans need their senators and representatives to preserve robust public weather and climate study.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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