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Since June 23, a group of former employees of the communications branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been busily resurrecting one of the government’s premier educational websites on climate change.

Climate.gov was started in the early 2010s by communicators with NOAA, and for more than a decade it consistently produced high-quality graphics and other charts documenting rising global temperatures, changing rain patterns, drought conditions, El Niño impacts, and other climate-related data. If you were a layperson and wanted to understand the parameters of human-induced global warming, the website rapidly became a go-to spot. By the 2020s, it was logging more than 1 million visitors per month, according to Rebecca Lindsey, a West Virginia-based communications specialist with an undergraduate degree in biochemistry and a master’s degree in journalism who used to work as the site’s lead writer and editor.

In February 2025, as the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) purges accelerated, most of the staff and contractors attached to the website, Lindsey included, were fired — part of a NOAA culling that saw the agency’s workforce cut by roughly 600 in the first couple months of the new administration. By May of last year, the website had been officially taken down. Try to access it today and you get redirected to a NOAA site with this Orwellian message:

In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (‘Restoring Gold Standard Science’), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (‘Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities’), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program’), 15 USC § 2934 (‘National Global Change Research Plan’), and 33 USC § 893a (‘NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs’), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed under Climate.gov will be available at NOAA.gov/climate and its affiliate websites.

In compliance with Executive Order 14303 (‘Restoring Gold Standard Science’), the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s June 23, 2025 Memorandum (‘Agency Guidance for Implementing Gold Standard Science in the Conduct & Management of Scientific Activities’), 15 USC § 2904 (“National Climate Program’), 15 USC § 2934 (‘National Global Change Research Plan’), and 33 USC § 893a (‘NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Science Education Programs’), you have been redirected to NOAA.gov. Future research products previously housed........

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