Volunteers Work for NOAA to Ensure Hurricane Data Is Collected

Climate|Volunteers Step In to Help Understaffed NOAA Track Hurricane Melissa

Frank Marks has flown aboard hurricane hunter aircraft dozens of times over the past 45 years, collecting data that has revolutionized meteorologists’ ability to predict how tropical cyclones will strengthen. When he retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year, the veteran scientist told colleagues, “If they ever need anything, I’m available.”

It didn’t take long for them to take him up on that.

Dr. Marks is one of a handful of NOAA retirees who have been working on a volunteer basis this hurricane season to make sure that the significant improvements in forecasting capabilities over recent decades can continue despite large staff losses orchestrated by the Trump administration earlier this year. He even returned to the air on a mission into Hurricane Erin in August.

“With the losses, we have a very young remaining staff and not a lot of experience flying in hurricanes,” Dr. Marks said.

“The data’s been flowing,” Dr. Marks added, emphasizing that there has been no interruption to valuable tropical cyclone observations. “They’re doing their job.”

But as Hurricane Melissa quickly strengthened to near-record intensity, creating an urgent need to capture observations of the storm’s winds and moisture as the storm approached Jamaica, “it’s been trying to say the least,” Dr. Marks said.

Because of the federal government shutdown that has now stretched on for a month, smaller-than-normal crews have been staffing NOAA’s hurricane hunter missions into Melissa for the past week, Dr. Marks said. Instead of two scientists, there is only one aboard each aircraft to oversee data collection from a Doppler radar system and observation devices, called dropsondes, that are tossed into the storm. Crews that sometimes numbered 15 to 18 now include about 10 or 11 people, Dr. Marks said.

Dr. Marks and others have stepped in because there are relatively few opportunities to observe storms like Erin and Melissa, and it can be a complex task to ensure the data is being collected properly and accurately.

At the same time, after the Trump administration fired probationary employees and granted others early retirements, there are about half as many people staffing the NOAA lab where those scientists worked to improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts. Research by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory has helped the National Hurricane Center cut its three-day forecast track error to one-fifth of what it was in 1990, and cut in half the error of its three-day forecasts for storm intensity.

The lab’s hurricane research division employed 23 people and also had the support of 29 staff at NOAA-affiliated Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami as of 2020, according to Robert Atlas, who retired from the NOAA lab in 2019 and serves as its director emeritus on a volunteer basis. Now, the division employs 10 people, plus 18 staff members employed at the university institute, Dr. Atlas said.

“We’ve lost a substantial number of employees,” he said. “We’re still functioning, I think, pretty well — primarily because of the dedication of the employees.”

Under Mr. Trump’s budget proposals, the sort of research that Dr. Marks, Dr. Atlas and others have pioneered would all but disappear. Mr. Trump proposed eliminating NOAA Research, the branch of the agency that oversees the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Kim Doster, a NOAA spokeswoman, said she was not aware of any retired staff volunteering to assist agency employees but that the National Weather Service, another branch of NOAA, “remains adequately staffed to meet its mission of protecting lives and property.”

The Weather Service “continues to prioritize the advancement and improvement of our models with cutting-edge data and emerging technologies,” she said in an email.

But because NOAA’s work force contracted by hundreds of positions, with senior scientists accounting for a disproportionate share of losses, critics of the Trump administration’s approach remain skeptical of the agency’s readiness.

“You know that can’t be the case when you lost 27,000 years of experience,” said Craig McLean, a former NOAA official who served under the first Trump administration.

Maxine Joselow contributed reporting.