{"id":1473,"date":"2026-07-26T07:04:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T07:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2026-07-26T07:04:52","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T07:04:52","slug":"are-weather-forecasts-less-accurate-trump-may-be-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1473","title":{"rendered":"Are Weather Forecasts Less Accurate? Trump May Be to Blame"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tThere\u2019s been some<\/a> speculation \u2014 in the media<\/a>, among experts, and maybe in your social circles \u2014\u00a0that weather forecasts have recently gotten worse. That shouldn\u2019t be a huge surprise. Rolling Stone<\/em> reported<\/a> last year that Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s anti-science agenda could hurt forecasting. Sure enough, his administration\u2019s determination to gut monitoring agencies seems to be having a real impact.<\/p>\n

\n\tExperts say staffing cuts at the National Weather Service<\/a> and a reported<\/a> decrease in the number of weather balloons being launched on a regular basis, in particular, could be making it more difficult to produce accurate forecasts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe National Weather Service lost a number of staff last year, and a lot of those individuals had a lot of experience,\u201d says David Stensrud, a professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Penn State. \u201cThey started to rehire again earlier this year, but I suspect the new hires are still going through training, or maybe they\u2019re just starting their job, and they don\u2019t have the same level of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWeather balloons are typically launched twice a day at dozens of locations across the United States. These balloons carry an instrument called a radiosonde, which collects an array of atmospheric data that helps determine weather forecasts, along with Doppler radar and various satellite imagery. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data shows that weather balloons are indeed being launched less frequently<\/a> than they used to be. This decreases the amount of data meteorologists have to work with, which can lead to less accurate weather reports.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause of the staffing issues with the Weather Service, a lot of the central U.S. and western radiosonde sites are not launched in the morning,\u201d Stensrud says. \u201cThey\u2019re launched typically around midday, so you don\u2019t get the full picture anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStensrud says that a lot of institutional knowledge goes into creating accurate weather forecasts, not just data. If you fire a lot of people who have that knowledge, forecasts will be worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe government has to be careful when it\u2019s making these kinds of staffing cuts, Stensrud says, not just because of the knowledge it\u2019s losing but because of the message it sends about the administration\u2019s attitude toward science. Many scientists have also left<\/a> agencies voluntarily because of the hostile environment the administration has created.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt may seem like weather forecasts are less accurate, and it would make sense given the Trump administration\u2019s cuts, but all of this does still need to be analyzed by researchers. Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University of Albany, says she hasn\u2019t seen research done on whether forecasts have actually become less reliable, and that may take some time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think that anyone has really done a formal study to see if forecasts are being degraded at this point, or not that I\u2019ve seen,\u201d she says. \u201cAll the weather services across the United States used to routinely launch twice a day \u2014 sometimes not, because of helium shortages or staff shortages. And that data is obviously crucial because it gets fed into our models in terms of forecasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCorbosiero hopes that recent increases<\/a> in hiring at the National Weather Service will help fix any problems that might have been created as a result of the cuts after Trump retook office. It won\u2019t be a quick fix, though, because new hires need time to get established in their roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMaking sure that our weather service offices are staffed, that we\u2019re able to collect the data that gives us key information about weather events \u2014 what affects people day to day, but also how our climate is changing \u2014 that\u2019s the top line issue,\u201d Corbosiero says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tOffices that measure climate data \u2014 including the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado \u2014 have also been closed<\/a> by the Trump administration. Corbosiero says the nation may be less prepared for future extreme weather events as a result, which could put lives in danger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThe model of the weather service is to protect life and property,\u201d Corbosiero says. \u201cThe less monitoring you have of weather and climate, the less likely forecasters are to be able to predict what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt wasn\u2019t difficult to predict that DOGE\u2019s indiscriminate firing of hundreds of thousands of civil servants and the slashing of agency budgets would have unintended, harmful consequences. Many of the consequences seem to have arrived \u2014 from the Ebola outbreak in Africa<\/a>, to gaps in weather forecasting, and beyond. Perhaps forecasting will improve if the new hires at the Weather Service can be used to reassemble what was carelessly discarded, but there\u2019s no getting around that the devastating impact of the Trump administration\u2019s assault on science will be felt for years to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been some speculation \u2014 in the media, among experts, and maybe in your social circles \u2014\u00a0that weather forecasts have recently gotten worse. That shouldn\u2019t be a huge surprise. Rolling Stone reported last year that Donald Trump\u2019s anti-science agenda could hurt forecasting. Sure enough, his administration\u2019s determination to gut monitoring agencies seems to be having…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/trump-weather-forecasting.jpg?w=1600&h=900&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2899,2900,799,289,92],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-accurate","tag-blame","tag-forecasts","tag-trump","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}