Trump is cutting climate satellites. That could affect weather prediction. [View all]

Two satellite instruments that track Earth’s carbon dioxide levels will soon go offline, deemed “beyond their primary mission.” Two others meant to monitor water contamination and air pollution, including from greenhouse gases, will be removed from a future satellite mission based on orders to “deliver a weather-only instrument manifest.”

The Trump administration is scrapping satellite observations of Earth that officials say go beyond the essential task of predicting the weather, according to budget documents that outline plans to reshape government research. In doing so, meteorologists and climate scientists say it is drawing a line between what is weather — and thus warrants government investment — and what is climate.

For example, language in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget calls for preserving funding for the National Weather Service while slashing anything tied to climate change, limiting government investment to “research that is more directly related to the NOAA mission.” It echoed a call in the Republican policy playbook Project 2025 to dismantle climate research, which the report said drives “the climate change alarm industry,” while continuing to improve weather forecasting accuracy.

But scientists said there is no such division between weather and climate — and that losing climate data will actually hurt weather forecasting.

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