Here’s a nightmare scenario: You’re in the emergency room of a busy hospital and victims of accidents, disasters and diseases are streaming in. Nurses and doctors huddle around computer monitors displaying patients’ heart rates and oxygen levels. Suddenly, the screens go dark. Someone is going through the building pulling all the plugs.

This is happening now to the monitors tracking the Earth’s vital signs. As Trump administration operatives from what has been called the Department of Government Efficiency race through federal agencies firing staffers, freezing funds and canceling leases on facilities — purportedly to eliminate waste — they are effectively powering off systems that track mounting environmental dangers, from weather balloons to air pollution monitors to radar stations to atmospheric observatories. Their chain-saw-waving approach to cost-cutting will only leave us blind as we head deeper into the 21st-century maelstrom of supercharged hurricanes, extreme heat waves and toxic wildfire smoke.

Right now, satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are capturing real-time images of the weather churning across the planet’s surface. The agency’s ocean buoys and radar systems help the Coast Guard perform rescues and fishermen navigate shifting tides and currents.

Those instruments need humans to operate them. But over the past three weeks, NOAA has lost about 20 percent of its work force. Layoffs hit the satellite operations division based in Maryland, and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. Hurricane season is right around the corner, yet staff on NOAA’s famous “Hurricane Hunters” teams, which fly into storms to measure their strength and assess their danger, were let go.

The agency’s scientists help build the forecasting models used to predict what the weather will look like next week, and what your children’s climate might look like half a century from now. Farmers use the agency’s weather data to plan their crop planting and harvesting, and urban firefighters rely on it to anticipate high wind events and prepare for downed power lines and evacuations. But staffing reductions at NOAA’s National Weather Service offices have suspended the launch of weather balloons that collect wind, temperature and humidity readings from Alaska to Albany.

These cuts threaten your budget, too. Insurance companies rely heavily on data gathered by NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey to assess wildfire, flood, wind and other risks. Some firms are warning that any interruption in data availability could drive insurance premiums for customers even higher. Other layoffs at the U.S.G.S. could undermine programs that monitor drought and flood conditions, hazardous spills and sewage overflows and the health of salmon fisheries off the Pacific Coast.