Extreme Temperature Diary- Sunday April 13th, 2025/Main Topic: Trump Plan Would Eliminate NOAA Climate Research

guyonclimate_mi5tor

The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉

Main Topic: Trump Plan Would Eliminate NOAA Climate Research

Dear Diary. In a full-blown assault on science, Trump and his minions are trying to destroy all efforts by the U.S. government to do and/or support climate research via the Project 2025 plan. What we see now is an effort to defund and eventually get rid of the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration, the organization that has led efforts to do climate research for decades. Personally, without its temperature record count system and archive, I cannot continue my research. We will see if the following site can stay up during 2025:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records

The purpose for getting rid of NOAA is not about saving taxpayer money, but to make sure that denialist propaganda pseudo-science is not met with headwinds of real truth. Yes, the fossil fuel masters must be obeyed, and Trump has bought into the troupe that carbon emissions don’t harm the environment.

Here is more from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/11/trump-noaa-cuts-proposal

Trump plan would eliminate NOAA climate research, slash agency budget

The plan would cut NOAA’s budget by 27 percent overall and eliminate a research branch of the agency studying the world’s weather, climate and oceans.

April 11, 2025

Meteorologists and members of the Japan Meteorological Agency monitor weather activity on a computer screen at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland, in December. (Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

By Scott Dance

A new Trump proposal would eliminate nearly all National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration labs focused on studying the world’s weather, climate and oceans and would slash much of the agency’s budget — part of what the White House document describes as an effort to sever all “climate-related programs” from the agency.

Documents detailing the administration’s proposal, reviewed by The Washington Post, would cut NOAA’s $6.1 billion budget by 27 percent overall, while effectively eliminating a research branch of the agency whose mission is to improve weather and climate forecasts, natural disaster warnings, and understanding of the natural world.

The programs are “misaligned with the President’s agenda and the expressed will of the American people,” the document says.

With the plan, the Trump administration has significantly accelerated its attacks on climate science, while opening itself to further criticism that it is handicapping the country’s ability to protect itself from natural disasters by cutting crucial and popular weather forecasting programs.

If it is enacted, Democrats and science advocates argue, the plan would make weather forecasts less accurate and would endanger communities vulnerable to extreme weather.

The budget proposal would keep funding flat for the National Weather Service while adding to its responsibilities by transferring some weather research from NOAA, its parent agency, into the NWS. It would cut research focused on seasonal climate trends that is vital to meteorologists’ ability to forecast disasters such as wildfire and tornado outbreaks or droughts.

“NOAA’s efforts inform our national disaster preparedness, weather forecasting, environmental threat management, and more,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said in a statement. “This move has nothing to do with efficiency — and in fact, it will endanger our communities and leave us all more vulnerable to destructive and costly natural disasters.”

A NOAA spokesman reached for comment referred The Post to officials at the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA, and the Office of Management and Budget.

“No final funding decisions have been made,” budget office spokeswoman Alexandra McCandless said in an email.

The proposal is the Trump administration’s opening salvo in negotiations with Congress over the federal budget for the fiscal year starting in October. Lawmakers could make changes, or could fail to act on the budget plan and operate the government under stopgap funding measures, as is currently the case.

The proposed budget cuts were first reported by Science and CNN.

Inside NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland. (Michael A. McCoy/Bloomberg News/Getty Images)

The administration is proposing to zero out funding for programs such as all NOAA labs related to climate, weather and oceans, including 16 cooperative institutes housed at universities across the country; regional climate data centers that track historic weather conditions; and Sea Grant programs focused on coastal environments and economies.

It would transfer many NOAA functions to other agencies. A National Marine Fisheries Service office focused on protecting vulnerable species would be moved to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Space Weather Prediction Center, responsible for forecasting geomagnetic storms that can wreak havoc on GPS and communication systems, would shift to the Department of Homeland Security.

Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator under President Joe Biden, said such moves seem to introduce new inefficiencies and hurdles for scientists.

“It almost looks like an AI-generated budget,” he said, “eliminating anything associated with climate” even if it has little to do with climate change.

The budget document also calls for some immediate actions.

It orders NOAA to halt spending on a program to develop the next generation of geostationary satellites, which provide a constant picture of weather across the United States as they remain in fixed positions flying above North America. The document said “proactive action” was needed “to address unsustainable costs in NOAA’s satellite acquisition programs.”

The document also calls for NOAA to develop a plan within the next two weeks under which its Office of Space Commerce would cede responsibility for tracking the traffic of spacecraft, satellites and space junk to a “non-government entity, whether it be a private sector partner or a non-profit consortium.”

Project 2025, a playbook for the second Trump administration spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, had drawn attention for its call to privatize many of the functions of the Weather Service. So far, the administration has not taken such steps, though its efforts to reduce the federal workforce and review agencies’ spending have left many Weather Service offices more strapped than usual.

“The Weather Service is flat funded, but it is not held harmless,” Spinrad said.

Project 2025 also called for the dismantling of NOAA, describing it as “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” The proposal comes as the Trump administration made separate cuts recently to a NOAA research partnership with Princeton University, citing a need to combat “climate anxiety,” and to a government office tasked with a report released every four years detailing the ways climate change is affecting the country.

In a video posted on X, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) called the proposed cuts “shocking and intolerable.”

“They think they’re going to address climate change by banning the use of the words, and now they’re going to remove the scientific capacity to get the information that we need,” he said.

The climate data collected by NOAA is used by a range of Americans, including farmers planning their crops, and communities preparing for worsening wildfires and more severe storms.

It also serves as a foundation for much of climate scientists’ work around the world, because it spans decades and is so comprehensive, said Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London. Scientists rely on NOAA datasets to evaluate changes in Earth’s climateand use the information as a benchmark for advanced models that assess the consequences of future planetary warming.

“The information provided by NOAA represents the factual backbone of how we know that our climate is changing,” Rogelj said.

Sarah Kaplan contributed to this report.

More on climate change

Understanding our climate: Global warming is a real phenomenon, and weather disasters are undeniably linked to it. As temperatures rise, heat waves are more often sweeping the globe — and parts of the world are becoming too hot to survive.

What can be done? The Post is tracking a variety of climate solutions. It can feel overwhelming facing the impacts of climate change, but there are ways to cope with climate anxiety.

Inventive solutions: Some people have built off-the-grid homes from trash to stand up to a changing climate. As seas rise, others are exploring how to harness marine energy.

What about your role in climate change? Our climate coach Michael J. Coren is answering questions about environmental choices in our everyday lives. Submit yours here. You can also sign up for our Climate Coach newsletter.

Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:

Here is More Climate News from Sunday:

(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)

More from the Weather Department:

Today’s News on Sustainable Energy, Traditional Polluting Energy from Fossil Fuel, and the Green Revolution:

More on the Environment, Nature and Science:

If you like these posts and my work on record temperature ratios, please contribute via my PayPal widget on this site. Thanks in advance for any support. 

Guy Walton… “The Climate Guy“

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