Image: NOAA
A 10-person team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were informed on May 31, 2025, that they were being fired, according to a new report from The Guardian. While employees at multiple federal agencies in the United States have been let go from their positions since Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took a metaphorical chainsaw to government jobs — NOAA researchers and staff included — the new cuts at the administration represent a casualty that relayed information directly to the public.
The firings demanded the removal of a contract that funded a small but impactful team that was in charge of publishing new content on NOAA’s climate.gov website. The direction or future of the website and its content hasn’t been made clear, according to the Guardian’s reporting. There is scheduled content that may reportedly still be published in the future, but what happens to the website afterward isn’t known.
That content primarily served as a bridge between NOAA’s researchers and the public. This included, for example, a monthly blog focused on El Niño and La Niña. Researchers who monitor conditions around the equatorial Pacific Ocean which drive both weather events have routinely passed their findings onto this team, who then package it into editorial the general public can understand and make useful. The editorial content was specifically designed to be politically neutral, a former program manager of the site, Rebecca Lindsey, told The Guardian.
“We operated exactly how you would want an independent, non-partisan communications group to operate,” said Lindsey. “It does seem to be part of this sort of slow and quiet way of trying to keep science agencies from providing information to the American public about climate.”
Although the climate.gov website is part of an American government entity, it has become a source for useful scientific information around the world.
