As Trump administration firings at the National Weather Service continue to effect local offices across the U.S., the agency announced Thursday that staffing limitations may further reduce or suspend the launch of weather balloons.

The announcement follows weeks of legal uncertainty over widespread staff reductions, and comes the day after the agency's Sacramento, California, office announced that it would stop answering public phone lines and reduce the extent and frequency of certain forecasting products because of "critically reduced staffing." Before that announcement, the office said it would be limiting its weather updates on social media.

The changes are among the first of many that weather service managers say they are likely to make as they prepare for an era of "degraded operations" under the current administration.

"The cracks are really now starting to show," said Daniel Swain, a University of California, Los Angeles climate scientist. In a discussion about the federal cuts this week, Swain pointed to further proposed budget cuts at the weather service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that he said would be "monumentally catastrophic."

"We've already seen major consequences from the decimation thus far," Swain said. "This is going to degrade weather forecasts."

On Thursday, the department announced that it will likely suspend the launch of weather balloons at several locations across the country, decreasing the amount of forecasting data captured by the balloons through sensors in the upper atmosphere. The latest announcement did not specify exactly how many sites would stop the previously twice-a-day launches, but said the reductions would occur at "selected sites ... due to staffing limitations or operational priorities."

The decision comes after several other locations, including in Alaska, Nebraska and South Dakota, had already halted launches.

NOAA agencies — including the weather service — provide key alerts and forecasts during weather emergencies and monitor for extreme events such as hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, extreme heat and dangerous fire weather. They also research and monitor ocean health, climate change, fisheries and atmospheric phenomena.

Before the January firestorm that devastated parts of Los Angeles County, weather service officials warned residents and emergency responders about potentially life-threatening winds that could fuel extreme fire behavior. Such forecasts remain a critical part of fire response across the nation.

After massive cuts were made across the agency in February, the Trump administration is now looking to further slash NOAA's budget, according to reporting from Science. The proposal looks to reduce the agency's budget by $1.7 billion, with cuts that would effectively end all climate-focused research.

"The scientific backbone and workforce needed to keep weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective will be drastically undercut, with unknown — yet almost certainly disastrous — consequences for public safety and economic health," the American Meteorologist Society and the National Weather Association said in a joint statement.

U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Commitee, said additional cuts and reductions at the weather service will only further hurt "life-saving public services that people rely on every day." She called on Trump and his administration to stop targeting the agency.

"The President's actions and his unwillingness to take care of critical public services will unnecessarily put people in harm's way," Lofgren said in a statement this week. "Chaotic and illegal firings, coercions to resign, reductions in force, and a general obsession with destroying the morale of dedicated public servants have left the National Weather Service's workforce so strained they cannot carry out their duties as they once did."

At the weather service office in Sacramento, meteorologists facing extremely short staffing said they will now only issue condensed daily forecast discussions once a day, according to an email sent to its partners. The San Francisco Chronicle was the first to report on the matter.

The office also said it won't be answering public phone calls and will limit overnight staffing and duties. Earlier this month, the office posted on its typically-active X page that "going forward, this account will have limited monitoring and posting," directing people instead to its webpage for real-time weather information.

So far, no other weather service offices in California have reported staffing issues that are affecting operations.

But in a new agreement between the National Weather Service and its employee union, the department has laid out contingency plans for what is described as future staffing shortages that could become severe, according to reporting from The New York Times. The agency remains under a hiring freeze.

Across the nation's more than 100 field offices, the agreement indicates that vacancy rates could climb as high as 35%, compared with current staffing levels, The New York Times reported. And vacancy rates are already high, estimated to sit around 20% as of early April.

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