During the first Trump administration, atmospheric scientist Erik Noble was known at NOAA as the “eyes and ears” of the White House, according to former agency officials.
Noble kept tabs on the agency’s inner workings, tried to delete sections of a major climate report and helped advance the career of a researcher who’s downplayed the effects of global warming, the former officials said.
But he could be a fist for the White House, too. Noble, a former data analyst for the 2016 Trump campaign, also helped dismiss NOAA’s chief scientist as well as the official in charge of producing the National Climate Assessment.
Now, Noble is back.
And current and former NOAA employees say Noble, 45, has returned as President Donald Trump’s point man right as the White House has proposed gutting and dismantling the nation’s preeminent weather and climate agency.
In practical terms, that means Noble is a driving force of cost-cutting efforts across NOAA, from canceling outside contracts to overseeing the firing and reduction of hundreds of long-serving staff members. Contracts to provide weather alerts in Spanish have been allowed to lapse. Vital research websites are being knocked offline. Grants, such as those for coastal restoration in Maine, are being withdrawn.
It also means Noble likely will play a key role in the Trump administration’s plans to produce a politicized version of the National Climate Assessment, the congressionally mandated report that is released about once every four years.
The new report, which would be designed to attack climate regulations, is expected to showcase the “benefits” of rising greenhouse gas emissions. The White House wants to handpick researchers to work on it.
There’s also this: Though his official title is principal deputy assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere, Noble is better known as the face of the Trump administration at the agency — and that’s earned him few friends among the tight-knit circle of scientists and staffers who comprise the NOAA community.
“His reputation certainly precedes him, and it’s not necessarily an impressive one,” said Rick Spinrad, NOAA’s administrator in the Biden administration.
Noble did not respond to repeated requests for comment. NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster said the agency has been ordered to review all contracts.
“NOAA is currently undergoing an agency-wide review of all contracts per Federal guidelines and working proactively to eliminate duplicative work and identify and renew critical, essential services that seek to benefit our taxpayers and scientific communities,” she said.
‘He got into some major battles’
When Noble first started at NOAA in 2020, there was hope his science background might mean he would take steps to protect the agency.
Before Trump first ran for office, Noble was an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked on climate and weather modeling.
After Trump’s 2016 victory — which he helped make happen as a data analyst — Noble worked briefly as a chief of staff at NASA in the early months of the Trump administration. He then became a senior adviser at NOAA and senior policy adviser at the White House.
That’s where he worked to ensure that the Trump White House’s political views influenced the inner workings of NOAA, former officials said.
One such incident happened when the Trump administration was caught off-guard by the release of the National Climate Assessment in 2018, said Don Wuebbles, an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois who worked on all five of the previous National Climate Assessments.
Wuebbles said Noble aggressively attacked the report and tried to claim its findings were not supported by research, even though it was based on the work of hundreds of studies and dozens of contributors.
“He got into some major battles with people,” Wuebbles said. “He didn’t want to accept that climate change was as definitive as we were saying, and we had the science that backed it up.”
NOAA spokeswoman Kim Doster denied that Noble ever worked on the assessment.
“Never during his term at the White House was the National Climate Assessment under his portfolio or purview,” she said.
After Noble’s installation as NOAA’s chief of staff, a new policy was imposed that required NOAA communications to get the approval of political appointees before being sent.
But it was his direct involvement in the so-called Sharpiegate incident that former NOAA officials said was a sign that Noble was willing to insert politics before science.
“He’s more loyal to the political proclivities than to the scientific demands of these positions,” said Craig McLean, who served as the top scientist at NOAA before Noble targeted him.
In 2020, Trump falsely claimed Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama. But rather than admit his mistake, he showed a hurricane map in the Oval Office that had been altered to back up his assertions — an episode later dubbed Sharpiegate.
The incident quickly generated controversy, both inside and outside the agency. Days after the Oval Office affair, then-acting NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs sent out a rebuke of the weather forecasters that corrected Trump, which only intensified the situation.
In light of that response from NOAA leadership, McLean notified Jacobs and others that their actions were a violation of the agency’s scientific policy. He sent an email telling Jacobs, Noble and other political appointees that they should read, sign and confirm their understanding of NOAA’s scientific integrity policy.
Noble was angered by McLean’s email. In a confrontation, McLean recalled, Noble asked, “What authority do you have to be telling us to do this?”
McLean said it was his job as acting chief scientist and assistant administrator for research. He also said that any NOAA employee could raise an objection to a violation of the policy.
Noble walked away without responding.
The next morning, McLean received an email from Noble that said he was fired.
Shortly thereafter, McLean’s replacement, Ryan Maue, arrived. Maue has acknowledged humanity’s contributions to global warming but has criticized ambitious climate policies.
Targeting contracts
Fast forward to today. Noble is now playing a key role in going after NOAA’s thousands of outside contracts. He is among the leadership team helping to decide which parts of the agency should be shredded and who should be fired.
Another National Climate Assessment is due by the end of 2027. NOAA typically plays a lead role, but the Trump White House just stripped away much of the funding from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces it.
Noble is now in a place where he could help put together a federal body of science that shows global warming “benefits” society, as the White House has explored.
He is joined by Laura Grimm, NOAA’s chief of staff who is also the agency’s acting administrator. Grimm, who holds a master’s degree in marine science, is a former director of ocean markets at the World Wildlife Fund.
In addition to Grimm, former and current NOAA officials said, Noble is reviewing contracts with Keegan McLaughlin, a special assistant at the Commerce Department.
McLaughlin is a recent Temple University student and Trump campaign intern and regional field director in Philadelphia, according to his LinkedIn profile. McLaughlin was a dining room attendant at this time last year and lists his Eagle Scout award as an accomplishment on his resume.
McLean, the agency’s former top scientist, said that means technical experts — sometimes with decades of experience at NOAA — must justify the continuation of scientific services to a group of inexperienced political appointees trying to aggressively downsize the agency.
And in a situation where Noble and his associates actually support a contract, and it’s worth more than $100,000, it then has to be justified to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — where it would come under more scrutiny, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.
A current official said Noble and his peers are effectively killing many contracts on their own by not elevating them to be reviewed by Lutnick. Which means the review process is at risk of becoming a political exercise with little concern for how the loss of scientific research could potentially harm Americans, McLean said.
“There isn’t a single part of NOAA that doesn’t have a reliance on commercial contracts for people, for facilities, for tools and devices, so it is hitting everywhere,” McLean said. “It’s a blind guy wielding a chainsaw.”
