2025-04-14
8 分钟NPR.
This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Waylon Wong.
And I'm Adrian Ma.
This spring, tornadoes and floods have battered homes and businesses across the Midwest and the Southeast.
As a result, at least 42 people have died.
The federal agency responsible
for issuing life-saving warnings and forecasts for severe weather is also getting battered.
The Trump administration is making deep cuts to staffing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
also known as NOAA.
These job cuts at NOAA include climate researchers and fish biologists.
They also include hurricane hunters, people who fly into storms to collect data.
The moves have put the meteorological community on edge.
Some are worried the cuts are jeopardizing reliable forecasts, or are even a precursor to privatizing the agency.
And while there are a lot of private tech companies doing weather forecasts,
most of these businesses still rely on the government for their underlying data.
So today, we're going to re-air our show from last November about tensions in the meteorology community.
These tensions are over how public weather data flows into private companies and at what cost.
And whether that flow of information will continue.
These days, there is a lot of news.