As a strong El Niño approaches, Government Accountability Office (GAO) data show the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) lost nearly one-fifth of its workforce in 2025.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said Oct. 8 that a strong-to-very-strong El Niño had more than an 83% chance of lasting through January-March 2027. It assigned an 83% chance to the event reaching its “historic” threshold in October-December 2026, defined as a three-month Relative Oceanic Niño Index reading of at least 2.5 degrees Celsius.
NOAA’s Oct. 15 outlook for December 2026-February 2027 favors warmer-than-average temperatures across much of the northern United States and wetter-than-average conditions across the southern tier and East Coast. Its drought outlook forecasts improvement or an end to drought in the Southwest, Southern Great Plains and Southeast, and in parts of the East Coast. NOAA says rain and snow could ease drought, while excess precipitation on dry soil can fuel flash floods and mudslides. National Weather Service Director Ken Graham warned that “too much precipitation on dry soil can fuel destructive flash floods and mudslides.”
A separate experimental forecast from NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory projected the El Niño would weaken by early winter even as its effects could intensify.
GAO’s analysis of Office of Personnel Management (OPM) data counted 12,441 NOAA employees at the end of 2024 and 9,984 at the end of 2025. It recorded 2,526 separations in 2025, equal to 22.5% of the average workforce. Separations include resignations, transfers and other departures as well as terminations, so the figure does not mean every departure was a firing. GAO also said many agencies took steps to reduce probationary and trial employee staffing in response to presidential directives and OPM guidance. That finding concerns those employee categories and does not explain NOAA’s overall decline.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s fiscal 2025 report said about 564 of the National Weather Service’s 4,369 employees left between January and April 2025. The report records NWS leadership’s account that some forecast offices could not maintain daily 24-hour coverage. Responses included temporary assignments, offers to reassign 155 employees and direct-hire authority for up to 450 positions.
Former NOAA climate scientist Tom Di Liberto told The Guardian, “The system has not really been tested since all the cuts happened.” The federal records document workforce departures and reported coverage gaps but do not establish that staffing losses caused a specific El Niño forecast failure.
NOAA’s fiscal 2027 budget request proposed about $4.54 billion, roughly 26.4% below the $6.17 billion enacted for fiscal 2026. The proposal is not enacted funding; a continuing appropriations law keeps fiscal 2026 rates in place through Dec. 11. NOAA scheduled its next El Niño diagnostic discussion for Nov. 12 and its next monthly three-month outlook update for Nov. 19.
