VIRGINIA KEY, Fla. — Ahead of an appropriations committee meeting, several scientists are raising a red flag about a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proposal to shutter all its weather and climate research labs.
That would include the one in Miami responsible for maintaining the nation’s top hurricane models.
You may have never heard of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory before, but when a hurricane is on approach, you have relied on the data collected by its scientists.
“The research that goes on at AOML is crucial to maintaining and improving the hurricane model forecast accuracy,” said Dr. Robert Atlas, Director Emeritus of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. “It is estimated that this loss, the loss of AOML and its cooperative institute, would result in a 20% to 40% decrease in hurricane forecast accuracy.”
That, he said, “would cost the economy more than $10 billion for a single hurricane season if only two major hurricanes were to hit the United States.”
The Miami lab’s former director Frank Marks, the former branch chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit at National Hurricane Center James Franklin and Local 10 Hurricane Specialist Michael Lowry, all describe that as a catastrophic blow to NOAA’s ability to collect vital data that feeds the models forecasters rely on to determine how strong a hurricane may be and where it could make landfall.
“There would be no more scientific support for NOAA’s hurricane hunter missions, as well as for airborne drones and ocean gliders,” said Franklin. “AOML performs functions that are critical for hurricane forecasting. P3 missions that collect Doppler radar data from the hurricane core improve some model forecasts by 30%, and it’s NOAA researchers who staff these flights.”
Added Marks: “Loss of the research at the NOAA and these cooperative institutes will make it harder to mitigate the impacts of hazardous weather.”
Said Lowry: “The elimination of AOML and its cooperative institute at the University of Miami can have a very detrimental effect on hurricane forecasts for our nation.
Taking aim at the lab, they say, could jeopardize the accuracy of forecasts and the lives of South Floridians in a storm’s path.
Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said right now, the bill is in appropriations, and so they are trying to get the word out about the public safety implications of eliminating the Miami lab.
“The president has proposed the closure of all of the NOAA research laboratories across the country,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Wasserman Schultz said she hopes to garner the bipartisan support that improving weather forecasting has historically had to help avoid it being shut down.
She said the Miami lab is one of a dozen. She said while President Donald Trump has proposed the closure in his budget, it has not been acted on in either the House or the Senate.
“However, even if the Republicans who are in the majority in both houses decide to not go along with, and hopefully that they won’t, to not go along with those proposed cuts, with those proposed closures, they could reduce them dramatically in the budget and only leave them partially funded,” Wasserman Schultz said. “And quite frankly, even if the Republicans fully funded the NOAA research labs across the country, President Trump has really not respected the Article 1 responsibility of Congress for appropriations and has rescinded funding.
“That’s why we have a huge reduction in force in the NOAA research centers already, that we’ve been talking about. So he could just unilaterally reduce staff, fire people, close partial operations. He’s really shown a penchant for just deciding to not spend funds as Congress intended, and then we pursue them with lawsuits and some have been successful and some have not been.”
The “bottom line,” she said, is “that however the potential, whatever potential exists for the closure of these vital research labs, it is going to have devastating consequences, and we need to make sure that we prevent that from happening at all costs.”
Local 10 News did reach out to both of Florida’s republican senators, as well as Republican representatives from South Florida, to get their take on the issue and inquire what they anticipate could be the impact of the cuts on local hurricane preparedness and property insurance rates, but have yet to hear back at the time of this story’s publication.
Read proposed 2026 NOAA budget here
Read White House 2026 budget here
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