Volunteers race to save climate data from Trump’s purge

When Rebecca Lindsey received a layoff notice from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February, it felt like an attack on the federal government's online science portal that she had helped run for a decade and a half. The site, called Climate.gov, was a vast repository of research about climate change.

- Carey L. Biron, Reuters

"It was the first blow in what was going to happen to Climate.gov," Lindsey, a former managing editor and program manager for the website, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. By May, the rest of her team had been laid off, and the next month the site itself moved to the NOAA's public relations department, a change from its longstanding autonomy. The NOAA did not respond to a request for comment on its plans for the site.

The Trump administration's unprecedented changes to federal websites — including a halt on data collection and hiding existing data — have put essential climate research at risk, environmentalists say. "It is as if the federal science enterprise has experienced a natural disaster," Lindsey said. In response, volunteers and nonprofit groups are racing to preserve data, make it available to the public and provide the tools that permit others to use it.

That includes Lindsey and her small team of unpaid volunteers, who are rebuilding Climate.gov as Climate.us. They restored access this month to the most recent national climate assessment, taken offline in July, as well as content removed under the administration’s new policies on diversity and equity. They hope to start publishing new content and updates by the end of the year.