On Tuesday, climate scientists briefed reporters on the latest monthly global temperature and climate data. They found that March 2025 was tied for the warmest March on record, and that Arctic Sea ice had reached its lowest extent in the 47-years of satellite records.
The monthly data fit the grim pattern of warming that had earlier led federal government agencies to conclude that the past two years were the warmest on record. But there was one important difference about this monthly briefing: government scientists were not conducting it.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced in March that it would no longer conduct the longstanding regular climate briefings. Tuesday's event was hosted by Berkeley Earth, an independent nonprofit research group that has launched a monthly climate briefing to try to carry on NOAA's tradition.
"It is unfortunate that NOAA has stepped back, but we want to make sure someone is doing it," Berkeley Earth Chief Scientist Robert Rohde said during the briefing. "We want to fill some of that gap."
While NOAA will continue to publish climate data, the agency said last month, recent deep cuts to NOAA staff prevent it from continuing the monthly briefings.
"It is unclear at the moment what will become of NOAA," Rhode said.
NOAA, which oversees the National Centers for Environmental Information and National Weather Service, is widely considered to be a world leader in climate science. But cuts ordered by the Trump administration's quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency eliminated about 800 staff positions and the administration is preparing an even deeper round of layoffs.
"This is likely one of many efforts by the Trump Administration to diminish critical services that were designed to support the needs of communities around the country and a vast array of business sectors," former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad told Newsweek via email. "I have no doubt that there will be consequences felt in terms of compromised safety and diminished economic security."
Berkeley Earth's substitute briefing is just one example of nonprofit groups attempting to restore climate-related information that the Trump administration has reduced or removed from public view. In addition to curtailing public access to basic climate data, recent changes have eliminated public portals to environmental information pertaining to agriculture, emergency planning, energy costs, local air pollution impacts and transportation planning.
On Monday the nonprofit Public Citizen filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of environmental and science groups over the removal of public information from federal agency websites.
Public Citizen Litigation Fellow Zach Shelley said interactive tools developed by five federal agencies and offices have been removed since January. Some of the tools had been in place for more than a decade.
"They make it so people can understand the world around them, the threats to the environment, the threats to their own health," Shelley told Newsweek. "The decision to remove them without any advanced notice and without any real justifiable reason for doing so is going to lead to people being less aware of the threats that they face in their local communities and across the nation."
The Environmental Protection Agency had long hosted an online resource called EJScreen that provided localized data on the pollution burden that communities faced from toxic air emissions. The lawsuit said that EPA removed EJScreen from public view.
"Pulling down EJScreen from the web obscures the real impact of toxic releases on low-income communities and communities of color from big polluters like oil, gas, and petrochemical operations, which is pretty ironic coming from an administration that claims to champion transparency," Jen Duggan, Executive Director of the Environmental Integrity Project said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the EPA said the agency would not comment on ongoing litigation.
Shelley said the Department of Energy removed its Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) tool, which provided information about the cost of energy relative to household income in communities.
"You could see who is going to be impacted by policy choices around spending on energy," Shelley said.
The DOE press office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Public Citizen lawsuit also identified online tools dealing with environmental data that had been removed by the Department of Transportation, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
An earlier lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of organic farmers challenged the Department of Agriculture for its removal of an information portal that provided farmers with resources for climate adaptation. "We're trying to feed the country, and to take science and information and potential funding resources away from farmers is ludicrous," Wes Gillingham, board president of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York told Newsweek at the time.
"The administration seems very hostile to allowing people to access information that the government has put together with taxpayer funds," Shelley said. "It seems these days like there's a war on information, a war on the public's ability to understand the truth about the world around them."
