‘A Weird Way of Making America Great’: Trump NOAA Purge Targets Scientists Working on Key Climate Models

Layoffs by the Trump administration at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have reached the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), a small but important institute that is responsible for climate models the world relies on.

Kai-Yuan Cheng, an atmospheric scientist who was notified of his firing late last week, said he rushed to finish his work on severe storm forecasting on one hour’s notice.

“I worked to the last minute of my federal employment,” Cheng said, as Science reported. “I tried my best to wrap up my work before I lost access.”

Cheng and nine other GFDL employees were fired from the Princeton, New Jersey, research center, as part of a far-reaching round of layoffs announced by the Trump administration late last month.

Started in 1955, GFDL is responsible for some of the planet’s most highly regarded climate and weather models. They are relied upon for global heating projections, as well as weather forecasting in the United States.

Several of the workers who were fired were in charge of crucial projects, and it is likely that several GFDL projects — including a new type of atmospheric model — will face delays, as will more accurate regional climate predictions.

Tom Di Liberto, an NOAA climate scientist and public affairs specialist who was laid off, told the American Institute of Physics (AIP) that seven of the 25 employees at the Office of Communications had been fired. Additionally, 11 employees were fired from the Environmental Modeling Center.

“Some would say we were already falling behind some of our modeling, and by firing folks like this here, there’s no way you can catch up,” Di Liberto said in a press release from AIP. “It’s a weird way of making America great.”

Last week, the Trump administration fired from 600 to 900 NOAA employees, most of whom were new or recently promoted “probationary” workers.

The American Meteorological Society earlier this week warned that the firings “are likely to cause irreparable harm and have far-reaching consequences for public safety, economic well-being, and the United States’ global leadership.”

The firings have impacted all of NOAA’s labs, which provide research on subjects as diverse as upper-atmospheric pollution and evidence of global warming in the deepest parts of the ocean, reported Science.

Of special concern to GFDL is the latest version of its atmospheric model, AM5. The new model is designed to run at higher frequencies and resolutions, and allows for the use of long-term climate change code to be used in seasonal weather forecasts. The updates required the reworking of model simulations of factors like rainfall, clouds, gravity waves and stratospheric ozone.

Scheduled to be completed this year, AM5 was expected to be the basis of GFDL’s future climate modeling efforts globally, with applications from United Nations climate change reports to insurance companies.

Sources told Science that two scientists who were central to AM5, including one lead, have been fired. Both had been employed as contractors for many years before they were officially hired.

One had given up their citizenship for the job. The researcher will likely stay on to work at the lab on a volunteer basis, hopeful that AM5 will be completed, with likely delays. The researcher said they left the country of their birth partially due to its authoritarian politics, adding that it was ironic and sad to witness similar dynamics coming to the U.S.

“I feel somewhat helpless. I want to push back. I want to do something,” the researcher said.

Some of the firings could face legal challenges, as happened at the National Science Foundation.

In an indication of possible backtracking, the Trump administration issued new guidelines on Tuesday stating that agencies, rather than the White House Office of Personnel Management, were the ultimate authority on whether to implement the firings.

Chris Bretherton, the atmospheric scientist in charge of nonprofit Ai2’s climate modeling, said it was disheartening to watch future climate research leaders at institutions like GFDL being indiscriminately fired.

“Artificial intelligence,” Bretherton said, “cannot compensate for a lack of human intelligence.”