Climate researchers are racing to preserve thousands of federal datasets as the Trump administration systematically dismantles climate science infrastructure, marking an unprecedented assault on environmental monitoring systems that underpin global climate policy.
The administration has removed human-caused climate change references from climate.gov, scrubbed National Climate Assessments from government websites, and targeted the National Center for Atmospheric Research for complete elimination. More than 3,000 federal datasets have been deleted or corrupted, threatening decades of continuous atmospheric and climate observations.
Climate Central has emerged as a critical data rescue operation, restoring projects like NOAA's Billion Dollar Climate and Weather Disaster dataset—information relied upon by nonprofits, insurance companies, and climate adaptation planners worldwide. "Something like the billion dollar disasters data set is key data that many people rely on," explained the organization's Vice President of Science, emphasizing the downstream impacts on risk assessment and disaster preparedness.
The Data Rescue Lab and Harvard Library Innovation Lab are migrating information from federal servers to independent backups, while the American Geophysical Union has stepped in to nominate scientists for UN climate reports—traditionally a federal government responsibility. Researchers are also coordinating independent work to replicate the canceled National Climate Assessment, which provides foundational climate projections for infrastructure planning and public health.
The administration's actions extend beyond data deletion. The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time, while the EPA has slashed regulations on pollution, water protection, and renewable energy development. The National Center for Atmospheric Research, described by scientists as "the mothership of atmospheric research," faces an existential threat that could eliminate the institution's seventy years of climate monitoring expertise.
