The data didn't disappear—not exactly. When NOAA terminated the Climate.gov staff in early 2025 amid budget cuts under the Department of Government Efficiency and pulled the plug on the site that July, the raw numbers technically survived somewhere in the government's server labyrinth. Fifteen years of climate data, carefully assembled explainers, teaching materials that educators had come to depend on. All of it still existed, in theory.
In practice, though? For the scientists, teachers, and reporters who'd come to rely on the site's roughly 15 million annual visits, the distinction meant nothing. Without the curated pathways, the plain-language synthesis, the human layer that made dense datasets comprehensible to non-specialists—the information might as well have been buried in a filing cabinet in a locked basement. A policy banner replaced what had been a lifeline.
The people who built that site weren't ready to let it stay buried.
On June 23, 2026, they launched Climate.us, a nonprofit platform that resurrects the entire Climate.gov archive and plants it firmly outside the reach of shifting political winds. It's part digital rescue operation, part pointed statement about what happens when public infrastructure becomes collateral damage to policy shifts.
Salvaging 15 Years of Public Work
Climate.us went live with the full archive intact—all of it. News articles. Expert blog series unpacking El Niño patterns and the Polar Vortex. The Global Climate Dashboard, with its real-time indicators tracking Arctic sea ice extent and ocean heat content. The Dataset Gallery researchers had leaned on. Data Snapshots offering ready-made graphics. Teaching Climate resources that educators had vetted and refined over years of classroom use.
The team also restored access to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, hosting a complete mirror of the original at nca5.climate.us—downloadable PDFs, Spanish-language chapters, the works.
"Trusted climate information should not disappear when politics change," Rebecca Lindsey told Axios Boulder shortly after launch. Lindsey ran Climate.gov as program manager before losing her job during staff cuts linked to the government efficiency initiative in February 2025. She'd spent a quarter-century supporting Earth science communication at NASA and NOAA, helped create NASA's Earth Observatory, built Climate.gov into something millions relied on. Now she's managing editor of the nonprofit successor she and her former colleagues have built from scratch.
The licensing split is deliberate, almost legalistic in its precision. Everything dated before June 30, 2025, credited to NOAA Climate.gov, remains public domain. New content published under the Climate.us banner after that cutoff carries a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license. For educators and journalists navigating reuse rights, the distinction matters.
Lean Team, Long Reach
Climate.us operates as a project of Multiplier, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. The core team is small—LinkedIn listed between two and ten employees as of mid-July 2026, though exact headcount fluctuates. Beyond Lindsey, the operation centers on Anna Eshelman as lead designer (a former Climate.gov contractor with expertise in Environmental GIScience), Mary Lindsey handling data visualization (she spent roughly 13 years shaping Climate.gov's visual language), and writer Michon Scott. Haley Crim coordinates Teaching Climate resources as a volunteer.
What the team lacks in size, it compensates for with an 80-plus roster of volunteer scientists serving as subject-matter expert reviewers. It's the same editorial model that gave Climate.gov its credibility—peer review, expert vetting, rigorous standards before anything goes live.
Richard Spinrad, NOAA's former Administrator, has said the platform "sustains a critical function and legacy against political manipulation of science." Katharine Hayhoe, the climate scientist whose gift for accessible communication has made her something of a public voice on the issue, has praised the platform's transparent approach and mentioned referring her audiences toward Climate.us.
The staffing may be lean. But the mission connects to data preservation efforts that gathered steam back in 2016, when organizations like the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative and Data Refuge began archiving federal environmental websites—essentially hedging against exactly this scenario. Climate.us goes further, though. It's not just mirroring data; it's rebuilding the synthesis layer, the connective tissue that made the information usable for people who aren't climate scientists.
Funding from the Crowd
Climate.us launched with roughly a third of its seed money coming from small donations—more than 2,500 contributions totaling around $250,000, according to the June 23 announcement. By mid-July 2026, the Givebutter campaign showed the fundraising had surged to $441,521 from approximately 4,900 supporters, blowing past the initial $300,000 target to hit 147% of goal. Multiplier serves as fiscal sponsor (EIN 91-2166435), routing donations through its 501(c)(3) structure.
There's no paywall. The site positions itself as a public good, funded by grassroots contributions and philanthropic support through its fiscal sponsorship arrangement. The FAQ mentions Climate.us is exploring content-sharing partnerships with aligned organizations, but the core offering stays free and open.
That's a gamble, of course—betting that a dispersed community will sustain what used to be a government service. Whether it works over the long haul is an open question.
What's Actually There
The site architecture echoes the old Climate.gov structure, perhaps deliberately so. News & Features houses longform explainers, Q&As with scientists (including a June 23 interview with NOAA ENSO expert Michelle L'Heureux), and an Event Tracker logging climate-related phenomena as they unfold. The Decision Makers Toolbox and Climate Tech sections target specific audiences—policymakers, planners, technologists looking for actionable intel.
Maps & Data offers the Global Climate Dashboard indicators, the Dataset Gallery (which requires submissions to meet FGDC and ISO metadata standards), and a Climate Data Primer aimed at newcomers trying to make sense of the field.
Teaching Climate continues its partnership with the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, offering classroom resources that have been through teacher review. The Resilience section links out to the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit and Climate Explorer—both still hosted at toolkit.climate.gov for now, though who knows how long that lasts. RSS feeds for each content stream let subscribers track updates without visiting the site.
Reception, and the Durability Question
The launch drew immediate attention. The New York Times covered it. So did NPR, Deutsche Welle, Ars Technica, The Register—all within days of the June 23 rollout. Reddit threads linking to the NPR and DW pieces racked up thousands of upvotes across multiple subreddits. A LinkedIn post from Climate.us noted "a big bump in traffic" after NPR's coverage aired in late June. By mid-July, the organization's LinkedIn profile showed more than 6,000 followers.
Still, the durability question looms. Federal climate data endpoints remain live through NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information and other official portals. But those portals lack the plain-language synthesis, the guided pathways that made Climate.gov valuable to anyone who wasn't already a specialist. Climate.us fills that gap—for now.
Doing so indefinitely requires ongoing editorial work, technical upkeep, and funding that can't lean on congressional appropriations. The small-donor model suggests a bet that enough people will pay for something the government used to provide. Maybe that works. Maybe it doesn't.
For the moment, though, the 15-year archive is back online. The Fifth National Climate Assessment is accessible again. The indicators keep updating. The site exists outside the policy churn that killed its predecessor.
Which might be the whole point.
