Callie Little

The proposed FY2026 NOAA budget request to Congress is nothing short of a dismantling of America’s weather and climate science infrastructure. If enacted, this budget would gut the very backbone of our nation’s weather research and development capacity, pushing critical progress back decades—and endangering lives in the process. Here’s what’s on the chopping block: 1. The National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) The home of tornado research, foundational to every warning issued during severe weather. The birthplace of the VORTEX field campaigns. The engine behind Warn-on-Forecast (WoF), hail modeling, and the development of radar technologies that have literally saved lives. Under this proposal? Eliminated. Worried about the NAM going away? Imagine the HRRR retiring and we are stuck with the RRFS with a FV3 core because all the MPAS work is gone. 2. Cooperative Institutes These partnerships between NOAA and top-tier research universities are how theory becomes practice—where academic innovation translates into operational forecasting. By slashing CI funding, NOAA would eliminate the very people—scientists, developers, grad students, postdocs—doing the daily work that drives the field forward. And it gets worse: Hurricane Reconnaissance Flights The proposal also slashes funding for aircraft recapitalization. That means NOAA’s hurricane hunter fleet—the very aircraft that fly into the eye of storms to gather real-time data that improves track and intensity forecasts—may no longer be maintained or replaced. The consequence? Fewer flights. Less data. Worse forecasts. More lives at risk. NOAA’s recon fleet provides critical observations that no satellite can offer. These missions fill gaps in the models and are often the difference between a “cone of uncertainty” and a clear landfall forecast. Without them, storm predictions would be less accurate, emergency response would be slower, and coastal communities would suffer the consequences. The U.S. has long led the world in weather forecasting, hurricane science, and severe storm research. This proposal would relinquish that leadership, ceding ground to other nations while crippling our ability to protect our own citizens from tornadoes, floods, and hurricanes.