Climate expert: Wait, see on NOAA

Earle Kimel

Sarasota Herald-Tribune USA TODAY NETWORK

CAC founder reflects on recent job cuts

The founder of the Sarasotabased Climate Adaptation Center said that it’s too soon to say how the firing of about 7% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s staff will impact hurricane forecasting for the 2025 season and beyond.

Last week the Trump administration fired hundreds of people – the office of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, DWashington, confirmed that the number is about 880 probationary employees, out of a workforce of about 12,000 at NOAA, with the next potential round of cuts targeting an additional 1,000 employees.

“I don’t know how it’s going to affect forecasting,” said Bob Bunting, CEO and chairman of the center. “I think we’re worried about how it might, and people are speaking about the complexity of the issue.”

The highest profile service provided by NOAA involves forecasting the weather and tracking hurricanes but its varied roles also includes monitoring fisheries and and funding ecosystem restoration efforts, such as the ongoing “Mission: Iconic Reefs” effort to rebuild the Florida Reef Tract in the Florida Keys.

“It’s really oceans and atmosphere and that covers a lot of ground, as we say, and water,” Bunting said then added NOAA’s varied functions “are really used as a driver for the economy – agriculture, aviation, weather forecasting, climate, just to name a few.

“I like to call it the climate economy because weather and climate has such an impact on our economy and it can either be positive or negative,” Bunting said.

Bunting has considerable inside knowledge of the agency, having worked for eight years at the National Weather Service and Environmental Research Labs, as State Lead Weather Forecaster for the State of Indiana and Lead Scientist of the Forecast Techniques Development Group at ERL in Boulder, Colorado.

Big science, big technology and a sophisticated workforce

Bunting characterized NOAA as big science and big technology, with a very sophisticated workforce.

“It’s not like you can go out and hire these people out on the street,” Bunting said.

“When I think about agriculture and transportation and logistics and public safety and emergency preparedness coming into hurricane season – these are all things that NOAA is involved in, in a big-time way – 12,000 people sounds like a lot of people but we have 340 million people in this country that are benefitting hugely from 12,000.

“Maybe it can be done just as well with 10,000 but we should just make sure of that.”

Published reports have documented that some of those cuts could impact crews responsible for Hurricane Hunter flights into the eye of tropical cyclones to gather storm data, as well as the scientists who use that and other data to forecast the daily weather and the path of hurricanes.

The National Hurricane Center recently released its annual forecast analysis for the 2024 storm season. The center made 347 forecasts in the Atlantic basin with record-accurate track forecasts on last year’s 18 named storms, which included five major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

Bunting conceded that some aspects of NOAA could be privatized but said that matters that impact life and property, such as, “‘We’re tracking a Category 5 hurricane that’s headed towards Florida’ – that’s not something you can privatize in my opinion.”

He later pointed out that the Federal Aviation Administration went through something similar.

“Certain people were let go and they were hired back when they realized that their jobs were more necessary than they thought,” Bunting said.

What is the Climate Adaptation Center?

The nonprofit Climate Adaptation Center is an independent nonprofit founded in 2019 with a mission to bridge a gap between climate science and public understanding, as well foster strategies to offset global warming and its inherent perils, such as sea level rise.

“We can make the understanding of what’s coming more personal to our local population because we understand this area and all the people and institutions in it as well,” Bunting said.

“A very important aspect of our mission is to educate our population of what the risks really are,” he later added, noting that many new Florida residents have never been through a hurricane and have no idea what the risks are in their chosen communities.

The center will release its official forecast for the 2025 hurricane season on April 1 at its annual Hurricane Season Forecast Day, hosted from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Selby Auditorium at the University of South Florida, Sarasota-Manatee, 8350 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota.

Tickets start at $52 and can be purchased online here: https:// bit.ly/4bpPPy0.

Last year, the CAC forecast 12 hurricanes with six major hurricanes – that prediction was off by one, as the 2024 season featured 11 hurricanes with three major hurricanes, including Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which was the first hurricane to make landfall in the Sarasota-Bradenton area in more than a century.

Bunting noted that the CAC releases its forecast in early April, roughly six weeks before the mid-May release by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center to give people more preparation time.

“It makes a difference, too,” Bunting said. “Last year when we got hit by a Category 3 storm (Milton), I believe it’s the first time a Category 3 storm came ashore and where it came ashore there were no deaths because it was so well predicted.”

Information from the Palm Beach Post and USA Today was used in this report.

Bob Bunting CEO and chairman of the Sarasota-based Climate Adaptation Center