Along With Climate Grants, Even Access To Historic Climate Data And Models Evaporating

A $15 million federal grant was supposed to help scientists better understand how the warming climate is harming plants and animals, setting many on paths toward extinction. But the Trump administration shelved it earlier this year, miring the research in a holding pattern. Jacquelyn Gill isn’t sure there’s a way out. The professor of paleoecology and plant ecology at the University of Maine spent hundreds of hours readying the grant proposal, and 13 years before that gathering knowledge about how past changes to Earth’s climate echoed through ecosystems. But without federal funding, she finds herself at a loss for how to keep building on that work as more species disappear.

More scientists are beginning to feel that crunch. A budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers’ hands. But even just the specter of President Donald Trump’s budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts.

Trump’s efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government’s scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here. With so much uncertainty across scientific agencies and academic research centers, even prominent scientists are hitting dead ends. “There are no safety nets,” Gill said. “Private foundations cannot begin to pick up the slack.”

More recent administration actions have limited or even wiped access to existing climate science. The government this week canceled a contract with the journal publisher Nature, though health officials said its studies remain accessible to researchers. A week earlier, it took down Climate.gov, where scientists posted updates about trends in the U.S. and global temperatures, and explainers about climate phenomena such as El Niño. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it would continue to post those materials on a different webpage.

EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/05/trump-cuts-climate-research/