Katharine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist, on new climate data website: “I’ll be sending people there for years to come”

When Donald Trump returned to the White House after his four-year hiatus, he unleashed Elon Musk and the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on federal institutions. Musk said that he would cut wasteful spending by $2 trillion but less than a year after it was set up, Trump quietly disbanded the pseudo-agency, and despite the mass firings of government employees and shuttering of agencies, government spending didn’t decrease.

One of the agencies that was heavily impacted by DOGE’s actions was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which lost between 16% and 17% of its workforce. The agency’s ‘Climate.gov’ portal for the public to access climate science was also closed, but a non-profit set up by former staff has resurrected the website renamed ‘Climate.us’.

Government climate website resurrected

The organizers of the new non-profit behind the Climate.us website say that the impetus behind the project was to ensure that climate information is kept “accurate, accessible, scientifically rigorous, and useful for the people who rely on it.” Rebecca Lindsey, a former program director for Climate.gov who is now managing director at the Climate.us project said in a statement: “Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change.”

She explained to NPR, that although the data from the old Climate.gov website was still technically available to the public on other NOAA webpages, it had become much harder to access it. Lindsey described it like renovating a store “and they had the front door open into a closet.”

The new Climate.us portal was launched with the help of donations, of which a third of the funding, over $250,000, came from small donations. The financial support of one big donation should keep the site operating through February 2027.

The new portal is already receiving praise. “For years, Climate.gov was where I sent people for accurate, trustworthy answers about climate… Every article made complex science accessible and transparent,” shared Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist. “At a moment when social science highlights public education as a key tipping point for climate action, Climate.us doesn’t just carry that forward - it raises the bar. I know I’ll be sending people there for years to come."

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