Highlights from the Change Log:
NOAA Upholds Its Authority to Provide Public Information
Welcome! This post is part of the EDGI Website Monitoring Team’s “Highlights from the Change Log” blog series. The purpose of this series is to highlight interesting changes we have observed in the language used on, or access to, federal websites. We want to share these changes to encourage public engagement with and discussion of their significance, as well as understanding of the ephemeral nature of website information. This website change happened in March 2025 and features the addition of information about NOAA’s statutory authority to share climate information.
What Happened?
In March 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) added a “Statutory Authority” section to the “About” page on its Climate.gov and Climate Program Office websites. The new “Statutory Authority” section references three acts of Congress that mandate NOAA disseminate climate and science information. The information was added to the Climate.gov About page between March 6 and 12 and to NOAA’s Climate Policy Office About page between March 18 and 25.
The three authorities listed include:
- Section 5(5) of the National Climate Program Act (1978), which directs the Department of Commerce (which includes NOAA) to create a National Climate Program that will “provide reliable, useful and readily available information on a continuing basis” and include “active dissemination of climatological data, information and assessments.”
- Section 104(d)(3) of the Global Change Research Act (1990), which mandates the development of a National Global Change Research Plan that includes “produc[ing] information readily usable by policymakers attempting to formulate effective strategies for preventing, mitigating, and adapting to the effects of global change.”
- Section 302 (33 U.S. Code § 893a) of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act (2010), which includes directing NOAA to “improve public literacy in STEM.”
Why We Think it’s Interesting:
NOAA is asserting its congressional mandate to collect and manage climate data, strengthen STEM education, and actively disseminate climate and science information in publicly accessible ways. Substantial information has been removed from agency websites in the past two months, and there are ongoing lawsuits about the legality of the Trump administration’s attempted removal of health and climate data and information from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture websites. Now, it’s reported that important NOAA research websites will go dark tonight. By posting its statutory authorities on its climate websites’ About pages, NOAA is clearly stating that it has a legal right and responsibility to provide this climate information to the public.
The first Trump administration suppressed climate information across federal agency websites, including removing about 40% of mentions of the term “climate change” across a sample of >5,000 federal webpages and removing the entirety of the EPA’s Climate Change website. However, climate information was mostly left intact on NOAA’s Climate.gov. Under the first Trump administration, NOAA continued to collect, manage, store, and disseminate climate data.
Under the second Trump administration, however, NOAA is not able to simply carry on with its work. Once the current round of layoffs has been completed, NOAA will have had to lay off approximately 25% of its workforce since January 20. The Trump administration has also stated its intention to cancel the leases on nearly 750 federal buildings, including the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii that has been integral to global climate data, and NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information in North Carolina, which manages the majority of NOAA’s climate data. These moves undermine federal climate science and public information.
NOAA’s climate data and information are unparalleled, and provide an international public service. We hope these public resources will remain public.
View the Changes