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After being laid off by the Trump administration as part of DOGE-era job cuts, a group of scientists previously part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have set up their own independent website to preserve more than 15-years worth of vital climate data.
The site itself, named Climate.us, doesn't just provide data – although there's plenty of that to go around – as it has already released potentially vital news and features, alongside various teaching resources to help people better understand the climate.
As reported by NPR, the scientists who now operate the independent site were the same individuals who ran Climate.gov – the government's now-defunct official climate resource channel – so have plenty of expertise in the matter having delivered vital data to millions of visitors each month for years.
The site – headed up by Rebecca Lindsey, the former program director for Climate.gov at NOAA – managed to crowdfund around $280,000 in order to get the ball rolling and sort out the technical aspects of the new independent site, with voluntary assistance from roughly 80 scientists providing subject-matter expertise and fact checking services to help the site provide as much as it possibly can.
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"This information is too important," Lindsey explained when expressing why the new site needs to exist. "It should remain in a protected place."
Unfortunately the nature of a project like this requires consistent funding, and although an anonymous donor has issued a one-time grant that allows the website to continue operations until at least February 2027, there's always the worry that the money will dry up at some point in the future, putting this vital information at risk once again.
The importance of the team's work hasn't been lost on many, however, and it's likely to continue to play a key role in keeping people informed about the climate at a time when major tipping points are being passed and environmental progress is being eliminated across the world.
Speaking about the importance of NOAA's previous work with Climate.gov before it was shut down, science communicator Gretchen Gehrke of the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI) explained:
"I think what [Climate.gov] did was take this huge amount of climate data that we have and make it much, much more accessible for the public and for policymakers," so presumably the new site will fulfil an equally key role, albeit without government backing thanks to President Trump.
Gehrke asserts that the destructive nature of DOGE's cuts, led by Elon Musk, has caused a 'brain drain' from the government, yet Climate.us "is a success story of that," and should likely be celebrated as such.
