Federal cuts shutter Purdue University's regional climate center
The loss of federal money has shuttered the products and services of the Midwest Regional Climate Center, one of six such centers around the U.S. providing data, tools and services on climate impacts.
The center's website now contains only one page telling users about the suspension of its programs.
"Support for all MRCC-hosted products and services is currently suspended as of April 17, 2025, due to a lapse in federal funding from the Department of Commerce through NOAA," the site says.
The MRCC is a partnership between Purdue University and the National Centers for Environmental Information under the Department of Commerce's NOAA. The center served nine Midwest states, providing users with information to make decisions on agriculture, energy systems, human health and urban planning.
NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information and Purdue University did not immediately respond to IndyStar's request for comments.
Staff at the MRCC were unable to comment on the loss of federal dollars.
The MRCC has partnerships with the United Soybean Board and Purdue Extension to provide the latter with custom data tools specifically for Indiana farmers. Those tools are no longer accessible.
The center had built a Flash Drought Risk tool to alert Indiana and Midwest farmers when they may be at risk of drought within the next couple weeks. That information helps those farmers plan accordingly.
The center also provided data on soil temperature and evaporation — important information for farm management.
Gabe Filippelli, executive director of the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University, said the nonpartisan and unbiased center provided planters with data that helps them with hardiness zones.
The center's data helps determine hardiness zones large-scale farmers use to plant crops, and those tools are useful to farmers so they know how well their crops will do, Filippelli said.
The loss of the MRCC's products could make it difficult for local meteorologists to add historic context to their weather reports.
Tom Coomes, chief meteorologist at ABC57 in South Bend, said he used MRCC data sets to tell his viewers if there is significant weather in the forecast and if those events were unique.
Friday's temperatures across Indiana were nearing 80 degrees, and Coomes said the MRCC website would help him determine how rare that was for mid-April.
'It's a really great resource that adds perspective to a forecast,' Coomes said.
The center was an educational information source that provided public access to important hazard information, Filippelli said.
Indiana's early April tornado outbreak was one of these weather events that MRCC services could provide context on, including whether that was an unusual occurrence.
'These centers developed quite a few tools and data sets, and you cannot access those,' Filippelli said. 'That to me is like burning all the books in a library, but even worse because U.S. taxpayers paid for all those books then the government decided to burn them.'
NOAA funds six of these centers throughout the U.S. The MRCC along with the Southern, High Plains and Southeast climate centers were cut from funding April 17, while the Northeast and Western centers are set to lose support in mid-June.
The Texas A&M-based Southern Regional Climate Center posted on social media platform X that the center might resume operations if 'replacement resources' fill in the lost funding gap.
'Unfortunately, all data and services offered under the base contract, including our website, will be unavailable unless and until funding is resumed,' the post says.
IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
Karl Schneider is an IndyStar environment reporter. You can reach him at karl.schneider@indystar.com. Follow him on BlueSky @karlstartswithk.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana, Midwest lose historic climate data after federal cuts
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