In January 2025, Los Angeles County suffered from historic wildfires — notably in Pacific Palisades and Altadena — which decimated 16,000 structures and caused at least 29 deaths. Amidst forecasts of another above-average fire season in California, the Trump administration’s intended cuts to federal agencies like the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Forest Service, outlined in its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal, are raising concerns over California’s capacity to keep fighting fires.
NOAA, which conducts research on climate change and provides real-time monitoring data for natural disasters like wildfires, is facing a 25 percent budget reduction along with the elimination of its research division, the Office of Oceanographic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). While still in the early phase of legislative development, threats of funding cuts — coupled with the administration’s broader attempts to thin federal workforces — have already had detrimental effects on the agency.
In April, roughly 600 probationary employees at NOAA were re-fired following a series of court decisions that initially ruled against, but ultimately overturned, objections to the Trump administration’s 24,000-person firing spree ordered in January. Many NOAA employees have also been offered DOGE’s voluntary early retirement proposals, some saying they felt “forced into making the decision” to leave NOAA.
Staffing shortages are already having tangible effects on NOAA’s capacity for data collection. Pomona College professor of environmental analysis Char Miller described how this threatened data is essential for firefighters.
“NOAA’s real-time [weather] information is exactly what you need on the ground, so that you understand, not just wind speeds, but also the intensity of heat and humidity,” Miller said. “Any firefighter on the line will tell you that if you don’t have that information, you’re not a firefighter.”
NOAA recently suspended certain weather balloon launches across the country. Weather balloons gather data on temperature, wind and air pressure, which, compiled with data from other satellites, are essential for modeling weather and providing the necessary real-time firefighting information described by Miller.
Researchers also rely on NOAA’s weather data; recent graduate Nathan Lu PZ ’25 interned on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) wildfire team during his senior year at Pitzer, where he utilized NOAA’s data sensors to create wildfire risk profiles for communities by measuring heavy metal concentrations.
“[NOAA] had a pretty robust system of sensors on the ground to be able to detect wildfires,” Lu said. “That was always very helpful in the work that we were trying to do, and I’m sure it was helpful for firefighters as well.”
Lu now conducts research at UCLA, where he collects soil samples from affected regions of the Eaton and Palisades fires to study how PFAs deposit in soil and the implications of urban burning on soils. Lu described how conducting environmental research remains immensely fulfilling, despite uncertainties surrounding federal funding.
“The research is taking new directions amidst all of the funding pulls,” Lu said. “What we’re finding is definitely still novel and innovative, and to keep that alive during these times is something that I found to be really inspiring.”
The U.S. Forest Service, which oversees over half of California’s forestland and represents the U.S.’s largest federal firefighting entity, is also facing severe cuts with the upcoming fiscal year budget. The Trump administration plans to slash roughly 10,000 employees — 30 percent of the Forest Service workforce — and reduce its budget by 63 percent. While firefighters may be exempt from layoffs according to agency officials, scientists and land management crews that strategize and execute prescribed burns and vegetation clearing are likely in danger.
Miller described how data-driven land management is especially important today following decades of ineffective fire suppression policies.
“Putting fire back on the ground using prescribed burns is actually essential,” Miller said. “One of the dilemmas is that people still think of fire as a threat. If you use prescribed fire effectively, usefully and in proactive ways, you still [raise] air quality indexes.”
Miller ultimately sees short-term air quality spikes as a necessary cost of preventing much more harmful urban conflagration that will occur if destructive wildfires aren’t proactively prevented. Unfortunately, according to Miller, understanding how to properly conduct controlled burns is becoming increasingly more difficult.
“Many of the quote-unquote ‘wet seasons’ no longer are wet, which is when indigenous people fired up whatever they were burning because they knew rain was coming,” Miller said. “We don’t know that anymore, so that’s a problem.”
Miller also notes that there’s a disconnect — for policymakers and the public — surrounding the importance of agencies like NOAA in collecting data that is not just necessary for solving complex problems like controlled burning, but also informing people in ways they may take for granted.
“One of the reasons lots of people don’t [understand NOAA’s role] is that, as Trump said, ‘we get our weather on the phone.’ We’ve created a digital environment that allows us to have amnesia about where our information actually comes from, who does that work and why that work is a public good that we should pay taxes to support,” Miller said.
Pitzer College professor of environmental analysis Susan Phillips is trying to address that disconnect. As director of the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, Phillips leads the charge in updating SoCal Earth, the conservancy’s online tool built for policymakers, community members and students to encourage “climate-informed decision-making.” Phillips described how SoCal Earth was created to address the need for reputable climate information.
“At this point, we’re now used to the idea that we can’t rely on data to be true,” Phillips said. “We have to assume spin, manipulation and untruth in data and in the way that stories are presented. We really are dedicated to sharing very reputable data with a broader public, in a way that people can trust, and that comes from reputable sources, that then puts data into the hands of people so that they can analyze it themselves.”
Phillips recently pioneered a new data visualization tool on SoCal Earth, created specifically to make fire data more accessible.
“One of the things that I did first when the [Los Angeles] fires happened was create a dashboard on SoCal Earth so that people could find out the most fundamental things about their neighborhoods that they might not know,” Phillips said.
Phillips hopes that these data will help keep residents prepared by allowing them to visualize real trends, including historical fires in that area, what acreage those fires were, the fire hazard severity zones issued by Cal Fire and more.
The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), which refers to the zone where wildland and human development meet, is key to Phillips’ research and course material. It may also be the key, as Phillips describes, to focusing efforts in fire management.
“I think of the Wildland Urban Interface as kind of this philosophical commons,” Phillips said. “This is the ground where we have to get it right, or else a lot of people are going to die. They’re going to lose property, they’re going to suffer.”
Recent research conducted by Phillips and fellow 5C students, including Lu, suggests that the WUI represents a small region where fire-conscious land practices and infrastructure can go a long way.
“What we found is that [the Palisades and Eaton] fires map perfectly onto the Wildland Urban Interface, and in fact, didn’t exceed the Wildland Urban Interface at all,” Miller said. “In terms of the historical analysis of wildfire, only 0.34 percent of any wildfire has ever crossed outside of the Wildland Urban Interface in the area.”
Phillips sees these findings as a reason to pursue innovative ways for humans to interact with the WUI.
“This is the ground where — and it’s a relatively small strip — if we can get it right there, we will actually have modeled a different way of being,” Phillips said.
According to Phillips, a significant amount of land authority comes from local municipalities. Similarly, a significant portion of wildfire data comes from California, specifically Cal Fire.
“We have all the data — it’s all public,” Phillips said. “It’s not compromised. It’s excellent data.”
While Phillips suggests that California has the potential to reduce its reliance on the federal government when it comes to fire management, Miller worries about the broader cultural sentiment that the Trump administration’s budget proposal may reinforce.
“When we lose [climate] data — which is consistent with the Trump administration’s denial of climate change — you wipe out the records of its existence,” Miller said. “This is the way in which politics supersedes science to the detriment of land and the people and other species and sustains.”
Whether or not the data exists, wildfires are becoming an increasingly prevalent issue in California. California has experienced almost 100,000 more burned acres in 2025 than the average year-to-date acreage burned over the past 5 years. Just last fall, 5C students watched from campus as the Bridge Fire encroached on Mt. Baldy Village.
“It was honestly really surreal,” Lu said. “I think we were talking about wildfires [in environmental science class] while there was smoke in the air.”
Miller predicts that threats of climate change will reveal themselves — if not through data, then through the wildfires that will emerge as the fire season ramps up again, this time amidst fewer federal resources.
“Okay, let’s take the hit,” Miller said. “Maybe that urgency will force people to pay attention to things that the phone allows us not to pay attention to.”
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