Rachel Cleetus contributed to this report.
This week we saw a split screen of catastrophic outcomes for our nation’s ability to address climate change: on one screen, the Trump administration continued its attacks on critical National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) science, data and tools. On the other screen, a dangerous budget reconciliation bill that rolls back clean energy progress just passed Congress.
The deeply inequitable and destructive reconciliation bill appears to be unpopular with the public and even Republican members, yet many in Congress still seem to care more about political power and fealty to President Trump than the interests of the public health and welfare.
Meanwhile, many people are still not aware of what’s happening to NOAA and why it matters so much for the safety of our communities and our economy. In this week’s Danger Season outlook, we drill down on these unprecedented attacks on NOAA so you have the information you need to advocate for limiting or reversing these harms. We also want to sound the alarm of even worse damage that could happen if the President’s FY26 proposed budget were to be enacted by Congress. (Note that the Congressional annual appropriations process is separate from the budget reconciliation bill).
What we’re watching
Last week, the Trump administration continued its sabotage of the United States’ weather and climate research and prediction infrastructure. Within days, all National Science Foundation (NSF) employees were kicked out of their building with nowhere to go, the climate.gov and globalchange.gov websites were dismantled, and satellites from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program will be discontinued permanently starting July 31. These steps by the Trump administration are a continuation of its anti-science, pro-fossil fuel agenda that will directly harm the US economy and American lives and livelihoods.
And these are just the latest attacks, building on months of Trump administration assaults on NOAA staff, budgets, resources and science.
Why we’re concerned
The websites taken down last week are managed by NOAA and the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which is also responsible for conducting the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA). All five previous National Climate Assessments were removed from the website, a move by the Trump administration that is nothing short of scientific censorship and theft by the government of essential resources that the American public paid for.
These assessments document how global warming is affecting each region of the US. But now, when you google “National Climate Assessment” and click on the first link, you only get a “This site can’t be reached” message. As an emergency stop-gap measure, an archive site of USGCRP and the recent National Climate Assessment was created by Internet Archive and can be found here, but this type of voluntary effort is no long-term substitute for the access the public previously had to its own science.
The USGCRP also did crucial ongoing work to coordinate climate research across federal agencies, per its Congressional mandate. Also lost are other important USGCRP reports such as its annual reports to Congress (a series called “Our Changing Planet”), including the FY25 OCP which came out in January, important workshop reports, a new climate literacy guide, and other special reports—all of which used to be available at https://www.globalchange.gov/reports. The Climate Indicators Platform, which had curated time series datasets and visualizations, is also gone. NOAA’s Climate.gov, a freely accessible public portal with a rich trove of climate data and information, has also been taken down. An archived mirror site is available at https://climate.govarchive.us/
Satellite data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program will also be discontinued starting July 31. Why does this matter for the American public? Two reasons: the data drastically affects both our hurricane forecasting ability and climate change monitoring in the Arctic.
One of these satellites carries the Special Sensor Microwave Imager Sounder (SSMIS), which allows hurricane forecasters to peer under the hood of a hurricane and analyze its structure. Without this microwave imagery data, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center may lose the ability to identify episodes of rapid intensification, especially during the overnight hours. For example, if a hurricane is a day out from making landfall and it’s nighttime, we may be totally in the dark as to whether that storm is undergoing rapid intensification, which could mean waking up to a now-major hurricane on track to make landfall.
The satellite data that we’re losing also monitors sea ice extent, ice sheet coverage over land, and snow depth in mountainous regions. If this satellite data is taken offline on July 31, the world will lose a significant portion of its ice extent monitoring tools that help us understand how climate change is progressing and accelerating.
Make no mistake, the discontinuation of the monitoring of the Arctic is a step by the Trump Administration to cover up the progression of global warming: if we can’t observe it, it’s not happening.
Another critical dataset that has been discontinued is NOAA’s billion-dollar weather and climate disaster data. It’s part of the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to bury the evidence on climate science to further its fossil fuel agenda.
Let’s raise our voices before it’s too late
For all of you who care deeply about climate science and addressing the climate crisis, and also care about keeping communities safe ahead of the next storm or extreme weather event, we’re sure this long list will leave you outraged—at the wanton destruction, at the ways it will put people in harm’s way, at the sheer loss of incredible scientific resources we rely on and have invested in over decades. We hope you’ll raise your voice to your members of Congress to push back on these disastrous Trump administration attacks that will take weather and climate prediction back to the 20th century. Policymakers should be forced to admit the truth: closing the lighthouse doesn’t move the rocks.
Here are two crucial upcoming moments to do so
Next week, on July 9, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will have a hearing for the confirmation of Dr. Neil Jacobs as NOAA Administrator. It’s important for him to commit to standing up for the agency, its mission and staff—something his future boss Commerce Secretary Lutnick has utterly failed to do. We hope members of Congress will ask him pointed questions on this front. Here’s what UCS is looking for in the next NOAA administrator.
Separate from the budget reconciliation bill that was just passed by Congress today, Congress will soon be moving forward with a regular, annual appropriations bill for the next fiscal year. It should outright reject President Trump’s terrible budget proposal and ensure that NOAA gets the resources it needs to do its life-saving scientific work.
For starters, under the proposed budget the entire Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) would be eliminated, including all of NOAA’s research labs, cooperative institutes, and regional climate centers. The President’s budget even seeks to shut down the Mauna Loa observatory, the site where data for the iconic Keeling Curve has been collected for decades.
UCS will be fighting hard to push back against these attacks in the weeks and months ahead and we hope you’ll join us in raising your voice too.