Climate data is vanishing from government websites, raising alarms
The Trump administration has erased thousands of climate and environmental datasets from federal websites, leaving researchers and advocates scrambling to preserve critical public records.
Jessica McKenzie reports for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
In short:
- Key federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA, have removed or restricted access to climate-related information, making it difficult for scientists and the public to find government data.
- USAID has been gutted, with 90% of its humanitarian projects — including climate programs — shut down, and records of its past work disappearing from public access.
- Nonprofits and archivists are racing to save environmental data, but the scale of deletions is unprecedented, and some datasets may be lost forever.
Key quote:
"We are at the mercy of our government to collect this data for the public good, and if they choose not to, I don’t think there’s a lot that we can do about it.”
— Gretchen Gehrke, environmental scientist and cofounder of Environmental Data and Governance Initiative
Why this matters:
This is déjà vu with a vengeance. In Trump’s first term, climate data quietly vanished from federal websites, scrubbed or buried in obscure archives. But this time, it’s a full-blown purge. Without access to climate and environmental data, communities, scientists, and policymakers are left in the dark on crucial issues like disaster preparedness, pollution, and climate justice.
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