Can we have been employed of the year in 2023, promoted in 2024 and trips in 2025? Everything is possible in Donald Trump America. Hanna Miller, specialist in the management of marine mammals, has had bitter experience. Last February, during vacation in Hawaii, the scientist consults her emails and learns that “her skills no longer correspond to current needs”. She does not yet know, but several hundred employees of the NOAA, the reputed American and atmospheric observation agency, have received the same lapidary message. A variant of the famous “You’re Fired” television of the President of the United States, actually translated by Elon Musk and his department of government efficiency (DOGE).
No branch of the state is spared by budget cuts and massive degreases. Especially not those linked directly or indirectly to the climate since, according to Donald Trump, global warming is a “hoax”. Since the return of the Republican to the White House, more than 1,200 NOAA officials have been summoned to empty their office. A thousand others are expected to follow in the coming weeks. “These erratic and blind layoffs, coming from totally ignorant and carefree people, are harmful to the nation”, enraged Craig McLean, former active chief scientist from the NOAA until his retirement in 2022. He himself suffered the compressor roller Trump, who had turned him during his first mandate, before Joe Biden returned it. “These decisions do not make America again large, quite the contrary.”
The Noaa, created in 1970 by Richard Nixon in order to bring together three old national agencies, is a precious instrument. She monitors the country’s marine resources; develops climate models; plays a crucial role in meteorological monitoring; Prevents droughts, hurricanes and other extreme phenomena. The institution “is essential to daily life and activities of countless businesses”, summarize, in a open letter To members of the Congress, several dozen environmental organizations. Tackling it will cause “undoubtedly unnecessary losses in lives and material damage”, alerts to L’Express Richard Spinrad, his ex-administrator. In the United States, and far beyond.
“Millions of people in danger”
Half of the Indian Ocean observation network is supported by the NOAA. The monsoon forecasts and the monitoring of cyclones in the most populous country in the world are also based on the models of the American agency. “Without this spine, early alerts with floods, heat waves and storms will weaken, endangering millions of people,” warned the climatologist Roxy Mathew Koll on Linkedin. Even fear for the small Pacific islands, dependent on the Noaa for the anticipation of typhoons. Or for the Caribbean nations. Brazil could no longer be able to count on its satellites, however essential to the surveillance of deforestation and the impacts of climate change in the Amazonian lung. And the whole planet does not happen from its tidalms for the overall observation of elevation of sea level …
“The weather and the climate do not stop at the borders. The only way to understand our planet is international cooperation. Becoming an isolationist and antagonist towards our allies is completely absurd,” deplores Tom Di Liberto, former Public Affairs Specialist of the Noaa, dismissed by email on February 27 at 3:45 p.m., two weeks before the end of his probationary period. In France, the research institute for the exploitation of the sea (Ifremer) is a long -standing partner of the American cousin. The joint projects and publications are legion – almost 20 % of these are co -signed with scientists on the other side of the Atlantic. The framework agreement between the two entities was even renewed in July 2023. Does it like to flow?
Surveillance communications
“We are necessarily worried,” admits François Houiller, the president and chief executive officer of the Institute, who has not yet had contact with the new NOAA management. The biologist could therefore not obtain a guarantee on the continuity of shared programs, like Argo. This network of 4,000 floats notably measures the temperature and salinity of the oceans. A sort of global blue thermometer. If Ifremer is the European pillar of this great program, and in finance between 7 and 8 %, the United States contributes to it, for … 57 %! Difficult to hope for such a maintenance while the Trump saber administration in budgets, wants to terminate the leases of the NOAA buildings – including the laboratory which manages the Mauna Loa observatory, in Hawaii, and which has the oldest measures of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – or caps the expenditure of scientists. With a limit set at a small dollar, completed the orders to guarantee the activity of radars, ships or floats which capture this crucial data on the evolution of the oceans.
These are at the heart of questions. Will they remain available? “At this stage, I do not know how to have the pooling of data that may have been acquired and continue to be by Argo … But that does not mean that it does not exist,” notes François Houiller, prudent. It could be the next step in the Sabording of the American agency by its climatosceptic president. Employees kept in post evolves in a world increasingly resembling Big Brother. They are now forced to request approval on a case -by -case basis for any communications or international commitments. According to Franceinfo,, Exchanges between researchers from the Noaa and Ifremer have been prohibited for a month. A penknife in one of the fundamental principles of scientific cooperation: its universal sharing.
“Remarkably expensive antics”
The Grand Congress One Ocean Science, which will be held from June 3 to 6 in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), could give the pulse of the damage caused by Donald Trump’s attacks. The United States is currently the second nation with the most registered, behind France. “I have not seen an unsubscribe movement, assures the president and chief executive officer of the Ifremer and co-organizer of the event with the CNRS. There are communications carried by American colleagues, I therefore hope they will be present.” This will not be the case with a NOAA program director. Initially invited to be one of the nine speakers in the congress, since it “was perfectly competent” according to François Houiller, she was automatically dismissed by the administration, being still in probationary period.
“The world must take into account historically proven scientific excellence, and ignore the false prophets”, proclaims Craig McLean. With 40 years of Noaa behind him, the former head of the American delegation to the UNESCO intergovernmental oceanographic commission followed the development of the agency in climate modeling, an area in which “shines” its laboratory of dynamics of geophysical fluids in Princeton. Not without pain, the scientist remembers the development of weather forecasts, “from the first satellite intended to predict time, the first computers devoting himself to weather studies after working on the Manhattan project”. All these advances have enabled the United States, through the NOAA, to occupy leadership in the field and to assert itself as a heavy goods vehicle within the World Meteorological Organization (OMM).
A position called into question today by “the remarkably expensive antics by Donald Trump”, regrets Craig McLean. They even push up the pessimism some of the most experienced experts. “Given the current situation, the United States should no longer be at the forefront of climate science,” sighs Tom Di Liberto. Coming from a scientist who represented his country during six COP – these large annual masses devoted to global warming – the observation is even more cruel.
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