Kategorie: News
Third Consecutive Attack on U.S. Climate Research
This is already the third incident of this kind we’ve had to report on in recent months: Following the repeal of fisheries protection zones in the Pacific and the shutdown of hundreds of deep-sea sensors in the Atlantic and Pacific, one of the most important climate reports in the U.S. - the annual Arctic Report Card - is now being targeted.
The Trump administration is discontinuing one of the United States’ most important climate reports: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) - part of the Department of Commerce and thus directly subordinate to the executive branch - will no longer coordinate the report on the state of the Arctic, which has been published annually since 2006, this year. NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster confirmed to several U.S. media outlets that the agency is discontinuing the organization of the report this year - though the underlying data will continue to be collected and remain publicly available. The agency did not provide a substantive reason for the discontinuation. Critics view the lack of a statement as an indication that this was a political rather than a scientific decision.
The Arctic Report Card is considered one of the most important scientific assessments of the region, which is warming faster than any other place on Earth. Peer-reviewed contributions from more than 100 scientists from over a dozen countries are submitted annually - covering topics ranging from melting sea ice and thawing permafrost to shifts in ecosystems. Rick Thoman, editor-in-chief of this year’s edition, said he learned of the decision during a brief phone call with NOAA. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) called the withdrawal “bad for Alaska” and noted that for 20 years, the report had helped document changes such as the transformation of the tundra from a CO2 sink to a CO2 source.
Not an Isolated Case
This move is part of a series of similar decisions by the Trump administration. Back in the spring, it was announced that the National Science Foundation was winding down the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) - a network costing approximately $386 million consisting of over 900 deep-sea sensors off the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina, and Greenland - which had been providing data on ocean warming, ocean acidification, and ocean currents for over a decade, including data on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key component of the global climate system. The U.S. Sixth National Climate Assessment and a multi-billion-dollar database on climate disasters have also been discontinued.
A Question of Leadership
Twila Moon of the University of Colorado Boulder, one of the authors of the Arctic Report Card, told the AFP news agency she was “extremely disappointed”: It is a mistake not to maintain the leadership and expertise of American climate science. Craig McLean, former chief scientist at NOAA during Trump’s first term, put it even more bluntly in an interview with The New York Times: Such decisions would push the U.S. “into the back seat” of global science.
Scientists are now looking for ways to publish this year’s findings despite the lack of government support - for example, with the help of non-governmental foundations. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen.