Princeton, New Jersey

A climate scientist with a PhD. from the University of California, Zachary Labe was fired along with nearly 900 other employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency had been targeted for a breakup by Project 2025, the massive government-remake plan disavowed by Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign but prepared by a team of his associates under the direction of the man later named to head his Office of Management and Budget.

Labe’s job involved tracking the melting of the arctic ice cap to understand and predict its effects on sea levels, extreme weather, and shifting air currents. Project 2025 described NOAA’s measurement of such things as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” Like the other dismissed NOAA employees, Labe received a form letter informing him that his work was not “in the public interest.”

NOAA is also home to the forecasters and researchers of the National Weather Service, who, as Labe told ABC News, generate “all of the data that supports the weather apps on your phone, the newspaper forecasts, your TV forecasts.” Farmers, builders, and the air, sea, and ground transport industries make high-stakes decisions based on the National Weather Service’s work. All told, the federal government’s weather and climate data costs taxpayers about $10 billion a year and delivers more than $100 billion a year in benefits to the U.S. economy, according to the American Meteorological Society. Its hurricane forecasts and warnings alone, the society says, are the basis for emergency preparedness efforts that save the country an estimated $1 billion a year in property damage.

Labe found another job, working for a non-profit called Climate Central, where he monitors climate data and turns out graphics depicting such things as global ocean heat content, the extent of arctic sea ice, and average fall temperatures over the last half century. In a recent social media post, he lamented the continued exodus of scientists from government. “Every time I open LinkedIn,” he wrote, “someone from a science agency shares an unplanned (forced) early retirement or RIF. Lately it’s NASA & EPA. In spring, NOAA. I think people have no idea how deep this loss really is. I don’t know what rebuilding federal science looks like, but it won’t be simple or quick.”

Date Posted: September 17, 2025