Trump Administration Fires Entire Content Team of Major NOAA Climate Website

In an apparent attempt to dismantle Climate.gov, a major United States government website that supports climate science education, the Trump administration has fired all of its content production staff.

The website is a gateway to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate Program Office.

“The entire content production staff at climate.gov (including me) were let go from our government contract on 31 May,” said a former contractor who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, as The Guardian reported. “We were told that our positions within the contract were being eliminated.”

The Trump Administration has launched a "very deliberate, targeted attack" on publicly-funded climate science. Effective this month, climate.gov will cease to produce new content. It is one of the most popular places on the internet for climate info. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025…

[image or embed]

— Eric Holthaus (@ericholthaus.com) June 11, 2025 at 2:16 PM

Former program manager of the site Rebecca Lindsey, whose job was terminated in February during the administration’s purge of probationary government employees, described months of discussions between NOAA career staff and political appointees over the website’s fate.

Lindsey called the move “a very deliberate, targeted attack.” 

Lindsey said a staff of roughly 10 contract employees — who have all been dismissed — created the website’s content and maintained it, with contributions from NOAA scientists. Lindsey said its editorial content was designed to be politically neutral and accurate in terms of science.

“We operated exactly how you would want an independent, non-partisan communications group to operate,” Lindsey said.

The website is visited hundreds of thousands of times each month, making it one of the internet’s most popular sources of climate science information.

“NOAA Climate.gov provides timely and authoritative scientific data and information about climate science, adaptation, and mitigation,” the website says in its mission statement. “Our goals are to promote public understanding of climate science and climate-related events, to make NOAA data products and services easy to access and use, to provide climate-related support to the private sector and the Nation’s economy, and to serve people making climate-related decisions with tools and resources that help them answer specific questions. In short, NOAA Climate.gov’s mission is to provide science and information for a climate-smart nation.”

The staff fired from Climate.gov feel the changes to the website were made by Trump political appointees with the purpose of restricting publicly accessible climate information, reported The Guardian.

“Sigh. NOAA’s climate.gov website is expected to stop adding new content after nearly the entire staff was fired at the end of May,” wrote physicist Dr. Robert Rohde, chief scientist at Berkeley Earth, on social media. “Whether the website will be archived, shut down entirely, or repurposed with Trump-aligned content is unclear.”

Tom Di Liberto, a former spokesperson for NOAA who was fired earlier this year, said two web developers were spared their jobs, which he said was concerning.

“It’s targeted, I think it’s clear,” Di Liberto said, as The Guardian reported. “They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for climate.gov. I mean, that’s a clear signal.”

The anonymous contractor said there were no plans for new content to be posted on Climate.gov, other than that which was pre-written and scheduled.

“After that, we have no idea what will happen to the website,” the contractor said.

“I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that’s not at all what it was.”

🚨 NOAA's climate.gov, a repository of reliable data on the world's climate and the effects, may be in its final days. The site's dashboards and data are critical for farmers, businesses, and homeowners alike. CCS's @ccbaxter.bsky.social and Noah Fritzhand explain in detail what could be lost:

[image or embed]

— Council on Strategic Risks (@councilonstrategicrisks.org) June 11, 2025 at 12:58 PM