With 100,000 federal science agency jobs and funding for weather and ocean monitoring falling victim to current US policy, experts are warning that the US is ceding its global lead in climate research. But a group of undeterred former government workers have secured funding they say will help keep the nation in the picture about the realities of a warming world.
Climate.us, built by former staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate.gov, aims to restore access to "accurate, accessible and scientifically rigorous" climate information, raising awareness around heat waves, storms, sea level rise and more.
The staff started rescuing information from the old website after the project fell victim to terminations and funding cuts soon after president Donald Trump — who has called climate change a scam and a hoax — took office for the second time in early 2025.
Climate.gov, which had about 15 million page views in 2024 and was growing yearly, was redirected to a different NOAA site controlled by political appointees put in place by an administration hostile to climate action.
"Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change," said Rebecca Lindsey, managing director of Climate.us. Lindsey told DW the popularity of the old Climate.gov site showed people "in the US do want unbiased, trustworthy information about climate. They're interested in it. They're concerned about it."US president Donald Trump is supporting coal and the fossil fuel sector rather than clean energy research and implementationImage: Daniel Torok/White House/Planet Pix/ZUMA/picture alliance
