NOAA Grant Disruption Methodology
Mridula (Mally) Shan,Eric R. Scott · September 2, 2026
Unlike some other agencies we track, NOAA grants lack an agency-specific data source for grants. For NOAA, we rely primarily on USAspending, DOGE, and crowd-sourced information to make determinations on grant status.
Data Sources
DOGE
DOGE provides data on terminated awards, although we have found that it is incomplete or occasionally incorrect, so we generally do manual review of DOGE data or use it only in combination with other sources.
USAspending awards data
We use this source primarily for metadata including grantee information, grant assistance listing (CFDA), grant notice of funding announcement (NOFO), and total obligated and total outlaid amounts. We also track changes to project end dates (i.e. project end date moved earlier, a “cutoff”, or later, a “reextension”), and deobligation events (i.e. a negative amount obligated) which we use in combination as signals of disruption.
USAspending account data (File C)
File C is released roughly once a month (except that Sep/Oct are combined into one release). We use this source primarily for outlay actions which we use to confirm reinstatements.
Terminations
An award is marked as terminated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI or via a trusted source, if it was listed by DOGE as being terminated, or if we see both a project end date cutoff and a deobligation in USAspending data.
Reinstatements
An award is labeled as reinstated if it has been reported as such directly to us by a PI, or if there is a re-extension of project end date or a positive obligation after a deobligation in USAspending awards data. Reinstatements are confirmed by verifying that an award has received outlays since the reinstatement.
Award value
The funds obligated and spent at time of earliest disruption are calculated using the current total obligated amount minus obligations since the earliest termination date and the total outlays minus outlays since the earliest termination date, respectively. The outlay and obligation events come from File C, while the current total obligated and outlaid numbers are from the more regularly updating USAspending awards data. As a result, these estimates may fluctuate week-to-week.