Since taking office, President Trump has made sweeping changes to federal agencies that work on climate change.
On April 8, he issued executive orders that lifted regulations on fossil fuels, allowing new coal projects on federal land and ending what he called “woke policies” that support renewable energy. He slashed the budgets and shifted the directives of key government agencies – especially when it comes to funding research, regulating pollution and responding to climate-related disasters.
He says this is in the service of everyday Americans: to create jobs, lower the cost of living and boost the U.S. economy. But what are everyday Americans trading away in the process?
The climate crisis has tripled the length of ocean heatwaves, a study has found, supercharging deadly storms and destroying critical ecosystems such as kelp forests and coral reefs.
Half of the marine heatwaves since 2000 would not have happened without global heating, which is caused by burning fossil fuels. The heatwaves have not only become more frequent but also more intense: 1C warmer on average, but much hotter in some places, the scientists said.
The research is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the climate crisis on heatwaves in the world’s oceans, and it reveals profound changes. Hotter oceans also soak up fewer of the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving temperatures up.
Sustainable well-being is “happiness that contributes to individual, community and/or global well-being without exploiting other people, the environment or future generations” (O’Brien, 2010, p. 2). Sustainable well-being education may encourage environmentally sustainable behavior while also teaching people how to live meaningful lives. However, there is currently a lack of research-based disseminable courses for teaching sustainable well-being. We hypothesized that taking the course would result in lower eco-anxiety and higher well-being, as well as increased pro-environmental self-efficacy and pro-environmental values. We used a randomized crossover repeated measures research design to assess pre and post effects. Quantitative results indicated that participating in the course led to significant reductions in eco-anxiety and increases in hedonic well-being, but did not lead to significant increases in overall well-being, or pro-environmental values or behavior. Qualitative results indicated that participants found the course engaging and useful. Future directions for research on sustainable well-being courses are discussed.
Undocumented orphan wells pose hazards to both the environment and the climate. Scientists are building modern tools to help locate, assess, and pave the way for plugging these ultimately forgotten relics.
Losses from heat and drought have cut production forecasts in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest coffee growers. Global production is still expected to increase, but not as much as commodity market investors had expected. That’s sent coffee prices up, largely because of continued high demand in Europe, the U.S., and China.
National Grid, which owns the high-voltage electricity grid in England and Wales, is rebuilding it in a government-backed drive to attract investment and tackle climate change.
The new devices, which are part of a slew of planned infrastructure upgrades, will help the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho improve their disaster warning system.
While toxic algae blooms have plagued the Golden state for the past four years, 2025 may be the worst year yet – at least for San Diego. SeaWorld alone has rescued 47 sea lions and 30 birds with suspecteddomoic acid poisoning this year, compared with only 11 sea lions in 2024 and 18 in 2023.
Beyond San Diego, the outbreak has sickened hundreds of sea lions, dolphins, birds and other marine animalsin Californiaover the past month, leaving animal rescue workers scrambling to keep up. Small fish consume the toxic algae and are then eaten by bigger animals, like sea lions and dolphins. For a sea lion with domoic acid poisoning, which can lead to seizures and heart failure, the chance of survival is roughly 50-50 if treated in time, Smith said.For a dolphin, it’s often fatal.
The National Hurricane Center’s forecasts in 2024 were its most accurate on record, from its one-day forecasts, as tropical cyclones neared the coast, to its forecasts five days into the future, when storms were only beginning to come together.
Thanks to federally funded research, forecasts of tropical cyclone tracks today are up to 75% more accurate than they were in 1990. A National Hurricane Center forecast three days out today is about as accurate as a one-day forecast in 2002, giving people in the storm’s path more time to prepare and reducing the size of evacuations.
Yet, cuts in staffing and threats to funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – which includes the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service – are diminishing operations that forecasters rely on.
I am a meteorologist who studies lightning in hurricanes and helps train other meteorologists to monitor and forecast tropical cyclones. Here are three of the essential components of weather forecasting that have been targeted for cuts to funding and staff at NOAA.
Tracking the wind
To understand how a hurricane is likely to behave, forecasters need to know what’s going on in the atmosphere far from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Hurricanes are steered by the winds around them. Wind patterns detected today over the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains – places like Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota – give forecasters clues to the winds that will be likely along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts in the days ahead.
A meteorologist prepares to launch a weather balloon at Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyo. Data collected by the balloon’s radiosonde will help predict local weather that can influence fire behavior. Neal Herbert/National Park Service
That move and other cuts and threatened cuts at NOAA have raised red flags for forecasters across the country and around the world.
Forecasters everywhere, from TV to private companies, rely on NOAA’s data to do their jobs. Much of that data would be extremely expensive if not impossible to replicate.
Under normal circumstances, weather balloons are released from around 900 locations around the world at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern time every day. While the loss of just 12 of these profiles may not seem significant, small amounts of missing data can lead to big forecast errors. This is an example of chaos theory, more popularly known as the butterfly effect.
The balloons carry a small instrument called a radiosonde, which records data as it rises from the surface of the Earth to around 120,000 feet above ground. The radiosonde acts like an all-in-one weather station, beaming back details of the temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, and air pressure every 15 feet through its flight.
For more than 80 years, scientists have been flying planes into hurricanes to measure each storm’s strength and help forecast its path and potential for damage.
Known as “Hurricane Hunters,” these crews from the U.S. Air Force Reserve and NOAA routinely conduct reconnaissance missions throughout hurricane season using a variety of instruments. Similar to weather balloons, these flights are making measurements that satellites can’t.
Hurricane Hunters use Doppler radar to gauge how the wind is blowing and LiDAR to measure temperature and humidity changes. They drop probes to measure the ocean temperature down several hundred feet to tell how much warm water might be there to fuel the storm.
They also release 20 to 30 dropsondes, measuring devices with parachutes. As the dropsondes fall through the storm, they transmit data about the temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction and air pressure every 15 feet or so from the plane to the ocean.
Dropsondes from Hurricane Hunter flights are the only way to directly measure what is occurring inside the storm. Although satellites and radars can see inside hurricanes, these are indirect measurements that do not have the fine-scale resolution of dropsonde data.
That data tells National Hurricane Center forecasters how intense the storm is and whether the atmosphere around the storm is favorable for strengthening. Dropsonde data also helps computer models forecast the track and intensity of storms days into the future.
Two NOAA Hurricane Hunter flight directors were laid off in February 2025, leaving only six when 10 are preferred. Directors are the flight meteorologists aboard each flight who oversee operations and ensure the planes stay away from the most dangerous conditions.
Having fewer directors limits the number of flights that can be sent out during busy times when Hurricane Hunters are monitoring multiple storms. And that would limit the accurate data the National Hurricane Center would have for forecasting storms.
Eyes in the sky
Weather satellites that monitor tropical storms from space provide continuous views of each storm’s track and intensity changes. The equipment on these satellites and software used to analyze it make increasingly accurate hurricane forecasts possible. Much of that equipment is developed by federally funded researchers.
Forecasting rapid intensification is one of the great challenges for hurricane scientists. It’s the dangerous shift when a tropical cyclone’s wind speeds jump by at least 35 mph (56 kilometers per hour) in 24 hours.
Under the federal budget proposal details released so far, including a draft of agencies’ budget plans marked up by Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, known as the passback, there is no funding for Cooperative Institutes. There is also no funding for aircraft recapitalization. A 2022 NOAA plan sought to purchase up to six new aircraft that would be used by Hurricane Hunters.
The passback budget also cut funding for some technology from future satellites, including lightning mappers that are used in hurricane intensity forecasting and to warn airplanes of risks.
It only takes one
Tropical storms and hurricanes can have devastating effects, as Hurricanes Helene and Milton reminded the country in 2024. These storms, while well forecast, resulted in billions of dollars of damage and hundreds of fatalities.
The U.S. has been facing more intense storms, and the coastal population and value of property in harm’s way are growing. As five former directors of the National Weather Service wrote in an open letter, cutting funding and staff from NOAA’s work that is improving forecasting and warnings ultimately threatens to leave more lives at risk.
Fast-fashion giants like Shein and Temu have been doing booming business in the United States in recent years, in part because of a tariff exemption that’s helped to keep prices low on packages shipped from China.
Now, President Trump has ordered the loophole closed as part of new tariffs, starting with packages from China and Hong Kong. It could have the effect, probably unintended, of putting a dent in global airfreight emissions linked to the fashion industry.
A constant challenge when talking about global warming is appreciating that little numbers — a rise in temperatures by just a single degree, for example — represent utterly profound changes.
Which is why it’s worth pausing to consider what scientists have said about what the world would look like if average global temperatures rose 3 degrees Celsius, and what it will cost.
Former EY partner David Kennedy calls for more “partnership” with corporations as the nonprofit finalizes a major revision to the Corporate Net Zero Standard.
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