A group of former United States government employees recently relaunched the defunct website Climate.gov as Climate.us, reviving the nation’s leading online platform for climate data after it was shuttered by the Trump administration in 2025.
Climate.us is now home to 15 years’ worth of climate-related news, visual reports, educational tools, and more that were once found at Climate.gov. The government website was shut down last June shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on federal science research. Just four months prior, the Trump administration also fired hundreds of staff members at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including all of Climate.gov’s full-time staff.
Over the past 12 months, a handful of those laid-off NOAA employees—led by Climate.us Managing Director Rebecca Lindsey, who served as Climate.gov’s head editor—have been rebuilding the website as an independent, nonprofit platform, tediously working through thousands of articles, links, and datasets. Among those efforts was the digital recovery of key resources such as the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The report was conducted by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, whose website the Trump administration also took down last year.
“Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change,” Lindsey writes in a press release. “Climate.us is building an independent, durable platform so people can continue to find the data and information they need to understand and talk about climate, and to teach, report, plan, prepare, and make informed decisions.”
Launched in 2010, Climate.gov provided the public with easy-to-understand climate resources, including interactive maps, robust curriculum materials for educators, and a dashboard of global climate change indicators. The Climate.us team continues that mission with the support of volunteers and donations, including over 80 scientists who review its content and around US$280,000 from crowdsourcing.
“Climate.gov was never about—and Climate.us will never be about—telling Americans what to do about climate change,” Lindsey tells NPR. “The site will continue to be nonpartisan but will be focusing on the science and explaining science and showing people what the data show.”
Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.
Photo courtesy of Tina Rolf, Unsplash
