It’s not a good time for climate science. The Trump administration has sacked more than a thousand staff from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the country’s leading agency for weather forecasting and climate science, potentially damaging its ability to do lifesaving work forecasting hurricanes and other extreme weather events. The New York Times reported plans are under way to fire another 1,000. If true, that will take the cuts to about 20% of the workforce.
On Monday, it was announced Nasa was axing its chief scientist, Katherine Calvin, who had been appointed to lead the agency’s work on climate change. In trademark Donald Trump/Elon Musk style, there appears little care or sense in where cuts have been made. It’s destruction for destruction’s sake, with tens of thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers underpinning the understanding of climate science dismissed as a “hoax” or, somehow, “woke”. As in most areas, what happens in the US on forecasting and science capability will have an impact beyond its borders.
