More than a thousand people gathered in Boulder on Tuesday to protest recent job cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
They stood along Broadway holding a flurry of signs, reading statements like "Save the planet, keep the scientists," "We need NOAA!" and "Science saves lives, lies destroy lives." Several cars driving by honked in support.
Part research-oriented and part regulatory, NOAA is the branch of the federal government in charge of meteorological and atmospheric information, responsible for everything from weather predictions to charting the seas. The agency operates environmental satellites and the National Weather Service. Meteorologists across the country depend on NOAA-generated data for everything from daily weather forecasts and extreme weather events to understanding broader changes in the climate.
The scope of the federal layoffs is still unclear, and it's not known how many people at Boulder's NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories were affected. In an emailed comment, National Weather Service Public Affairs representative Susan Buchanan wrote "Per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters."
David Skaggs, a former state representative that has secured funding for NOAA in the past, organized and spoke at the protest.
鈥淭oday, we stand with NOAA and the National Weather Service, but we also stand with public servants all across the country 鈥� at the Park Service, at the Forest Service," Skaggs said. "Why do you think service is in the name of all of these agencies? Because they serve us."
Skaggs quoted political philosopher Thomas Paine in his speech, noting that "these are the times that try men's souls," and quoted activist John Lewis as well, stating "we will make good trouble."
Janet Grassia, a resident of Boulder, doesn't think demonstrations are effective, but after watching more of President Trump's actions, she made her way to the protest. She thinks it's important for research at the facility to continue.
"This study of climate change that NOAA has been involved in, that's bedrock, as far as I'm concerned," she said.
Carol Knight, also of Boulder, worked at NOAA for nearly 20 years. She says the agency plays an outsized role in tracking dangerous weather and helping people prepare.
"The labs here have improved weather forecasting, they have improved climate tracking," she said. "We know what's in the atmosphere because of the labs here and the work they've done.鈥�
The human toll of the terminations
Kirana Bergstrom is one of the scientists the protesters would hope to keep. Until recently, the Mathematics PhD worked at NOAA's David E. Skaggs Research Center in Boulder, building AI models that could take massive amounts of high-level weather data and turn it into more granular and easily accessible information.
"With artificial intelligence, you can take that really, really coarse wind field prediction and then make it finer scale so that it's more useful for wildfire applications, aviation and different things like that," Bergstrom said, demystifying her work at the national laboratory. The results would help firefighters and emergency managers better forecast erratic wildfire behavior, like that of the devastating Marshall Fire in 2021.
But last Thursday, Bergstrom received the email she'd been both dreading and expecting.
"I saw 'terminated' in the subject line and I didn't read the email at all." she said. "My heart kind of jumped up into my throat, and I was like, Oh no, okay. It's happening."
The email, sent from a NOAA.gov account and signed by Deputy Under Secretary for Operations Nancy Hann, offered a terse explanation for her termination.
"The Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the Agency鈥檚 current needs," the email read.
She was just 12 days from the end of her probationary period.
After receiving the email, Bergstrom turned in her laptop, said goodbye to her supervisor and coworkers, and left the office. She had already cleared out her desk weeks earlier, in anticipation.
"I could see other people doing that kind of slow walk through the hallways, stopping at different offices and different doors to say goodbye," she said. "I heard lots of crying, so generally, not a super happy day."
With her termination, Bergstrom said the fate of her important project is now uncertain.
"Hopefully someone else from my team can pick it up. But as it stood, I left the office within about an hour of finding out," she said. "I didn't get a chance to explain to anyone how it works, or do any sort of transition, of, here's where I'm at. Here's where we're going with this project."
As a probationary employee, Bergstrom was not offered severance, and her eligibility for unemployment benefits are uncertain. More existentially, her dream of working as scientific researcher for the federal government is now dead.
She is turning to the private sector to rebuild her career and wasn't able to attend the protests outside of her former office building on Monday because of a job interview scheduled at the same time.
She expects scientific progress will have a hard time recovering from the federal brain drain.
"I really don't see how that makes government more efficient," she said. "To lose a whole group of people that are working really, really hard and that are generally very, very well qualified for these jobs."
