Job cuts at NOAA drive concerns about extreme weather forecasts, as climate change worsens natural disasters

Andy Hazelton learned he'd been fired the same way everyone else did. Like hundreds of his colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, he received a mass email from the head of the agency at around 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 27 confirming his termination, effective immediately.

"They gave us 'til 5," said Hazelton, a scientist who specialized in hurricane research and modeling at the National Weather Service, the meteorological branch of NOAA responsible for weather forecasts. "That was our cutoff. And then our email access was lost later that night, too."

More than 800 employees were dismissed in February's initial sweep across NOAA, a congressional source told CBS News after the firings. And more job cuts could be coming — all as part of a federal cost-cutting initiative by the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.