Trump administration shutters major federal climate website
The website of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which hosts numerous climate change reports and resources, including the comprehensive and often cited National Climate Assessments, is no longer operational, according to a NASA spokesperson.
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The U.S. Global Change Research Program's website was taken offline, along with all five editions of the National Climate Assessment and a wide range of information detailing how human-amplified climate change is impacting the United States.
Although the National Climate Assessment is required by Congress, in April, the Trump administration announced it was canceling funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates the federally mandated report that's published every four years. All the authors working on the upcoming Sixth National Climate Assessment, set for release in 2028, were also dismissed.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), comprising 15 federal member agencies, was managed by the White House through the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
NASA will now take over, Victoria LaCivita, communications director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told ABC News.
"All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring compliance with statutorily required reporting," LaCivita said, referring ABC News to NASA for more information.
A NASA spokesperson wrote in response to an ABC News inquiry, "The USCGRP website is no longer active. All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring continuity of reporting."
Since mid-April, a small yellow banner has appeared at the top of the U.S. Global Change Research Program homepage, informing visitors that: "The operations and structure of the USGCRP are currently under review." The Internet Archive has not recorded the website as being active since Monday morning.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment, a breakdown of the latest in climate science coming from 14 different federal agencies released in November 2023, is the most recent version of these reports and provides a detailed, peer-reviewed snapshot of climate change's present and future impacts in the U.S., along with recommendations for adaptation and mitigation strategies.
In addition, the U.S. Global Change Research Program site provided a wide range of educational resources, including interactive webpages, videos and podcasts that explained the far-reaching impacts of climate change in an easy-to-understand manner, even for the public.
For example, late last year, a first-of-its-kind interagency website on sea level rise was launched by the U.S. Interagency Task Force on Sea Level Change and hosted on the globalchange.gov domain. For the first time, the public had access to a centralized, comprehensive online resource offering the latest research on sea level change, along with an interactive database that allowed users to explore how sea levels have changed over recent decades.
As of Tuesday, references to the Fifth National Climate Assessment and various climate change impacts could still be found on other government websites, such as those of the USDA and EPA. And all of the National Climate Assessments remained available for public download, archived in NOAA's Institutional Repository (IR).
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Last week, NOAA announced that another federal climate-focused website, Climate.gov, was also being shut down, saying, "In compliance with Executive Order 14303, 'Restoring Gold Standard Science,' NOAA is relocating all research products from Climate.gov to NOAA.gov in an effort to centralize and consolidate resources."
The agency wrote that future research products previously housed on the climate-focused website will now be under the NOAA.gov domain and its affiliated websites. The agency posted its final updates to Climate.gov and its related social media account on Friday.
Although much of this information may end up on various other federal agency websites, many climate scientists are voicing their concern and disappointment, stating that these actions are making it more challenging to find climate change information.
Craig McLean, former assistant administrator of NOAA research, told ABC News that these decisions "create a gap in both the availability of and the opportunity to use valuable information that is essential to everyday life for the public and decision-makers alike."
Haley Crim, a former NOAA employee who worked at the agency's Climate Program Office, said in a Bluesky post, "The National Climate Assessment, and all special reports and past assessments, are now offline. Federal climate science is being systematically erased."
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Crim elaborated that this is "not an organized attack like what happened with the DEI executive order. It's the culmination of expired contracts, decisions about individual products, lack of staffing and resources, and refusal to protect climate information.'
"Every day is a trainwreck for climate science. Stay aware of what is happening, and speak out!" wrote Zach Labe, a former NOAA climate scientist who now works at Climate Central, in a recent Bluesky post. He said he had saved documents in advance of the rumors that the USGCRP program was being targeted.
As of this writing, NASA has not provided any details on when and where the reports will be available again or if the new assessment will proceed.
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