The Trump administration on Monday shut down a federal website that had long served as a central hub for U.S. government research on climate change, sparking backlash from scientists who say the action will hamper the country’s ability to respond to the growing threats of global warming.
The now-disabled website, globalchange.gov, hosted by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), provided free access to scientific reports, including all five editions of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), as well as data, maps, educational videos, and other tools designed to help the public understand the consequences of climate change.
The takedown has alarmed many in the scientific community who argue that the move appears to be part of a broader effort to limit the availability of information related to climate science.
“Scientific Censorship at Its Worst”
“They’re public documents. It’s scientific censorship at its worst,” said Peter Gleick, a California-based climate and water scientist and one of the original authors of the first National Climate Assessment published in 2000. “This is the modern version of book burning.”
Gleick added that although the climate assessments can still be accessed through alternative sources like the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, they will now be “harder and harder for the American public to find.”
The website, mandated by law, had previously made available over 200 publications and offered tools such as an interactive climate atlas that visualized projected changes in temperature, precipitation, and extreme weather patterns based on different emissions scenarios.
Until its removal, the top item on the homepage had been the Fifth National Climate Assessment, described on the site as “the preeminent source of authoritative information on the risks, impacts, and responses to climate change in the United States.”
Legally Mandated Reports Disappear
The USGCRP was created by Congress in 1990 to coordinate federal research on climate change and produce a National Climate Assessment every four years, a requirement that remains in effect.
However, in April, the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and subject-matter experts who had begun working on the Sixth National Climate Assessment, casting doubt over whether the next edition of the report will be completed on schedule, or at all.
“This is scientific information that the American taxpayers paid for, and it’s their right to have it,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and an author of four previous editions of the assessment.
She emphasized that the law mandates these findings be made available to all federal agencies and departments, as well as to the public. Hayhoe noted that the now-defunct website included detailed projections about how climate change would affect everything from rainfall and drought to biodiversity, sea-level rise, and human health.
“Climate is changing faster than any time in human history, and we know that if we don’t adapt, if we don’t build resilience into all of our systems — our food and water systems, our infrastructure and our health systems — that we will suffer the consequences,” Hayhoe said.
Disappearing Climate Resources
The takedown of globalchange.gov follows the earlier removal of another key federal resource: climate.gov, a website previously maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That site, once staffed by NOAA employees, was taken offline after reports that many of the people who had worked on it were dismissed. The domain now redirects users to a more general climate page on NOAA’s website, which critics say offers far less depth.
Gleick said the new version is a “pale substitute” for the wide range of scientific information that was previously available, and that the broader trend of removing publicly accessible websites related to climate science appears to be part of a campaign to hide the risks of global warming—particularly those caused by fossil fuel use and the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
A Shift in Official Messaging
While the White House has not issued a statement specifically explaining the removal of the climate site, President Trump in May signed an executive order pledging to “restore a gold standard for science” by ensuring federally funded research is “transparent” and “rigorous.”
The order criticized past practices by federal agencies, including the use of “worst-case scenario” climate models that, according to the administration, relied on “highly unlikely assumptions.” The president’s comments raised concerns among scientists that his administration was attempting to minimize the urgency of climate threats by discounting more severe scientific projections.
Around April 10, a yellow banner appeared at the top of globalchange.gov, reading: “The operations and structure of the [U.S. Global Change Research Program] are currently under review.”
Shortly after, the site was taken down entirely, along with its vast repository of reports, educational materials, and climate tools.
Scientists Warn of Long-Term Consequences
Hayhoe said the National Climate Assessments have been critical in helping Americans understand how climate change is affecting their daily lives and their communities.
“It tells people in your region, here is what is already happening and here is what is going to happen, and here is how it is affecting your home, your insurance rates, your water, your food, the plants and animals that you see around you,” she said.
She also warned that without continuing the assessments, policymakers and the public will lack the up-to-date information necessary to respond to evolving climate threats.
Gleick echoed this concern, noting that “the deeper threat to the country is that we won’t do the new assessments that are necessary to understand the latest research on climate threats to the country.”
“It seems like anything climate related is being either cut to the bone or completely eliminated, with no assessment of its value or importance,” he said.
