Brittany Janis (right) and Cathy Richards.Credit: Benn Craig (Brittany Janis)
In February, the administration of US President Donald Trump barred scientists who work at federal agencies from attending the latest plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Hangzhou, China. The move ended US participation in what the White House described as “international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values”. It marked a sharp break from decades of US leadership in the IPCC, where US scientists and diplomats have helped steer negotiations, shape reports and fund the process that underpins global climate action.
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Although some non-federal US scientists remain involved in the IPCC, funding for their participation is uncertain. At the same time, the US government is drastically cutting budgets and staff across the federal agencies that track and interpret climate data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), responsible for more than 50% of global ocean monitoring, faces significant cuts of about 25% of its current budget which poses a threat to climate modelling and weather prediction. More than 100 climate-focused National Science Foundation grants have been cancelled. The US Global Change Research Program, a federal initiative that coordinates and integrates climate-change research across multiple agencies, has also lost its funding. Its website, a crucial repository for climate reports, has been shut down.
These cuts to US climate science leave American cities without the information they need to respond to weather emergencies. And further cuts are expected, including plans to shut down ten NOAA laboratories that study how climate change is altering weather patterns, for example, including a Miami-based team of ‘hurricane hunters’ that operates a specialized fleet of aircraft that fly directly into and around storms to gather lifesaving data that can more accurately warn communities when they need to move out of harm’s way.
This seismic shift in US science investment will send ripple effects across the globe. The United States owns 42% of the 1,309 Earth observation satellites in operation — far more than any other country. (China, with the second largest fleet, owns 25%.) With fewer US experts to analyse satellite data, coastal cities all over the world face increased risk without the climate intelligence needed for resilience planning.
Trinidad and Tobago’s 2024 National Adaptation Plan, for instance, relies on methodologies and data from IPCC assessments, which themselves heavily integrate observational data and climate modelling generated by US institutions. In the Caribbean, researchers use US data sets to predict the potential impact of climate change on tourism and other major economic sectors.
Efforts are in place to help cities and coastal communities produce their own climate data, but these are moving slowly. In 2017, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated the Programme for Building Regional Climate Capacity in the Caribbean to train local meteorologists and hydrologists and set up computing facilities for climate modelling and simulations. But a 2023 report on the progress in Jamaica found that there were still not enough skilled professionals who could independently produce Earth observation services. Another initiative, SERVIR, a joint NASA–USAID programme, has trained thousands of specialists around the world to access and interpret Earth observation data and integrate them into their national and regional planning, such as for flood forecasting and air-quality monitoring. But with the end of USAID in May, these efforts have now been cancelled.