Since its entry into office in January, the Trump administration has launched a major effort to limit public access to climate change information. After the president has kept the official government website which hosted national climate assessments earlier this month, NASA has broken its promise to publish them on its own site.
On Monday, July 14, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens told the Associated Press that NASA did not host any Globalchange.gov data, which was the official website of the World Research Program for World Changes (USGCRP). This inter-institutions program publishes national climate assessments every four years, as mandated by the Global Change Research Act in 1990. These reports provide scientific information authority on the risks of climate change, impacts and responses to the United States after the USGCRP website was dark at the beginning of July, the White House and NASA said that the Spatial Agency comply with the 1990 law, according to the AP. Apparently, this is no longer the case.
“NASA has no legal obligation to accommodate Globalchange.gov data,” said NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens in an email. Fortunately, copies of previous reports are always available in the NOAA library, and the last report and its interactive atlas can be found here.
The Trump administration essentially dismantled the USGCRP in April when it removed federal employees from their posts. He also terminated the program contract with ICF International, a technology and policy consulting company which provided technical, analytical and programmatic support for USGCRP and in particular its national climatic assessments. Later this month, the administration rejected all scientists working on the next evaluation, which was to be published in 2028. Now, previous reports are more inaccessible to the public than ever.
Eviding USGCRP and Squirreling, its national climate assessments are only part of the total assault that the Trump administration has launched against the American climate. Thousands of employees in other federal agencies that study and follow global warming, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – have lost their jobs since Trump took office in January. Its administration has also frozen climate -related subsidies, killed large federal climate programs, offered important reductions in federal research programs and purged references to climate change of federal websites.
Trump’s efforts to hide the realities of climate change will have real consequences, but it is ultimately futile. Americans face this crisis every day while they sail on new challenges pulled by the increase in global temperatures. The fifth national climate assessment, published in 2023, warned of “potentially catastrophic results” for the nation while climate change exacerbates extreme weather conditions. Many parts of the United States already feel these effects.
Multiple events of serious floods have already killed dozens of Americans in the first half of 2025. More recently, at least two people in New Jersey died when torrential rains sparked sudden floods in a large part of the North East on Monday July 14 and more than 100 people in Texas, including at least 36 children from the County of Kerr – devastating. If it is difficult to link a single weather event directly to climate change, many studies show that the increase in global temperatures increases the frequency and intensity of extreme rains in the United States and in the world, thus increasing the risk of flood. Indeed, the warmer air increases both evaporation and the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere may contain. An atmosphere that contains more humidity can produce more intense precipitation events, which is exactly what the United States has recently experienced.
Forest fires are also more difficult to manage. This was apparent in January, when more than a dozen destructive and destructive forest fires decimated from Los Angeles. In Arizona, the firefighters had trouble containing two active incendiaries near the northern edge of the Grand Canyon who destroyed a historic lodge, triggered evacuations and forced officials to close this part of the National Park on Sunday, July 13. climate.gov. Human warming plays an important role in this trend, drying the vegetation that feeds forest fires. A study has revealed that climate change can be responsible for almost two thirds of the observed increase in summer weather conditions in the past 40 years.
Wherever Americans look at, they see evidence of climate change. It is not only deadly floods and endemic forest fires – these are serious waves of heat, changing seasons and rivages flowing. These are farmers who lose their livelihoods, families faced with the increase in insurance costs and the outbreak of infrastructure in extreme weather conditions. It is more difficult to access information on this current crisis will not protect the public from its effects, but it will make more difficult for governments and communities to adapt to it.
