The Trump administration is gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing staff, and undermining the science that keeps us safe. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick promised that NOAA wouldn’t be dismantled, yet layoffs and funding cuts show otherwise. NOAA provides free, life-saving weather data that Vermont’s farmers, emergency responders, and communities rely on daily. Weakening it now, as climate disasters grow more frequent and severe, is reckless and dangerous.

Most of the public attention to the threat to NOAA has focused on weather forecasts, and it is certainly true that ready and free availability of weather data is essential to Vermont’s economy and quality of life. NOAA also supplies the raw data that is used by various private organizations, like The Weather Channel/weather.com.

But I want to focus here on NOAA’s role in helping us understand what is happening to our climate and why. NOAA is a linchpin worldwide in climate monitoring and research. Weakening NOAA would have devastating consequences for global climate research and forecasting. Dismantling NOAA means ‘flying blind’ into climate crises. Without ready access to NOAA’s data, both current and archived, the world would lack essential tools to track and respond to rising sea levels, worsening heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, and other climate disasters. Restricting or privatizing NOAA’s data would threaten public safety, economic stability, and the U.S.’s leadership in climate science. Gutting NOAA would not only undermine decades of critical research but also signal a retreat from the U.S.’s role as a global leader in science and innovation and in actions to prevent climate change.

Our Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, along with Representative Becca Balint, must act to protect NOAA’s funding and ensure its essential data remains public. Vermont communities depend on it.

Richard S. Hopkins

Middlebury