SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
national oceanic and atmospheric administration
'Deaths Will Continue to Mount,' Scientist Warns After August and Summer 2026 Set US Heat Records
"It's unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies’ profits, ahead of people’s health and safety."
Sep 09, 2026
Under US President Donald Trump's predecessor, government scientists used the release of data about record-breaking temperatures to warn that "we are facing a climate crisis," but with the Republican climate denier back in the White House, that commentary now comes from outside experts.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Wednesday that 2026 had the warmest August ever recorded in the contiguous United States. Following a July that broke a Dust Bowl record, August averaged 75.6°F—which was 3.5°F above the 20th-century average—with daytime maximum temperatures averaging 88.6°F.
This year also featured the hottest meteorological summer—June to August—in the 132-year record, with an average temperature of 74.4°F, or 3°F above average, according to NOAA. As CNN reported, "The Dust Bowl summer of 1936 has... long been regarded as the benchmark of hottest summers in the US, but has now been equaled or eclipsed twice in the past five years thanks to the influence of human-caused climate change," both in 2026 and 2021.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, told Agence France-Presse that "it is now time to stop acting surprised that our warming planet keeps getting warmer."
"This is occurring exactly as forecast by scientists literally decades ago," he stressed. "The interesting question is not whether we will keep breaking heat records (we will), but whether we're going to do anything about it or just stand there while the climate train runs us over."
NOAA said that "record-breaking warmth was widespread across the West, Southwest, southern Rockies, and southwestern Plains, as well as the southern Florida Peninsula. California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado each set records for their warmest August average temperature. California and New Mexico also recorded their warmest average daytime maximum temperatures on record, while average nighttime minimum temperatures were record warm in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado."
Beyond the Lower 48, "Alaska's average temperature during August was 52.4°F, 2.9°F above the 1925-2000 average, ranking in the warmest third of the 102-year record. Alaska's June-August average temperature was 51.6°F, 1.1°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record," the agency detailed.
"Hawaii's average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average, ranking as the third-warmest August in the 36-year record," the agency added. "Hawaii's June-August average temperature was 69.4°F, 0.8°F above average and ranking in the warmest third of the record. Hawaii's average temperature during August was 70.8°F, 1.4°F above the 1991-2020 average."
Marc Alessi, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that "we now live in a completely different climate than the one that existed 50 years ago. Heat records were shattered in all parts of the globe this summer, from the United States to Europe to Asia."
Alessi pointed to El Niño, the warm phase of a key pattern in the Pacific Ocean. Recent research suggests fossil fuel-driven global heating has intensified El Niños, and experts have said that the currently developing event "may be stronger than anything since our monitoring began" and make 2027 the hottest year humanity has ever endured.
"While the developing super El Niño undoubtedly impacted the summer's global temperature and heat records, we must recognize that this El Niño is occurring on top of a changed climate from the burning of fossil fuels," Alessi said. "In other words, we can expect record-breaking summers for generations to come if nations fail to sharply curtail heat-trapping emissions."
"What's equally clear is that policymakers—especially in richer, high-emitting countries like the United States—must act urgently to limit climate change impacts and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the crisis," he continued. "Extreme heat and back-to-back heatwaves have taken a deadly toll this summer in the United States and across the world. Without action to reduce global warming emissions and invest in climate resilience measures, heat-related illnesses and deaths will continue to mount."
Despite the threats currently posed by the global crisis, and expectations that they will only get worse as the world blows past the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, "the Trump administration has attacked and dismantled policies to limit heat-trapping emissions and to prepare for climate disasters," Alessi noted.
After openly courting Big Oil on the campaign trail, Trump has served fossil fuel industry interests in a range of ways since returning to the White House last year, including by declaring a national energy emergency, waging a war on renewable power projects, and ditching the Paris Agreement, again.
"Failure of the administration and Congress to act has also left workers exposed to killer heat without comprehensive, enforceable heat-health protections," Alessi said. "It's unconscionable that the federal government is putting specific industry interests, including fossil fuel companies' profits, ahead of people's health and safety."
NOAA's new data was released less than two months away from the midterm elections—which which Democrats hope to win back majorities in Congress from Trump's Republican Party—and as firefighters in Türkiye, host of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31), battled deadly blazes.
"It is not enough merely to respond to the consequences of the climate crisis. We must eliminate the causes that exacerbate it," Efe Baysal, Türkiye manager at the global advocacy group 350.org, said Wednesday, calling for a phaseout of fossil fuels. "COP31 is an opportunity for Türkiye to demonstrate true leadership in this direction."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Truly Devastating': Trump Ends Federal Funding for Key Arctic Climate Report
"For two decades," said one of the report's authors, "it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Aug 11, 2026
The Trump administration has reportedly decided to yank federal funding from an annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that examined the state of the Arctic, which is warming significantly faster than other regions of the world as continued fossil fuel extraction and use drive up global temperatures.
Politico, which first reported the decision, noted that the move "jeopardizes public dissemination of the report that NOAA has published since 2006. It has previously been available on the agency’s website, requires NOAA staff for its production, and pools data from NOAA scientists for many of its findings."
Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has been an author on NOAA’s peer-reviewed Arctic Report Card since 2020, wrote on social media that the Trump administration's decision "is truly devastating."
"The Arctic Report Card has been one of my favorite scientific endeavors," Labe wrote. "For two decades, it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates."
Speaking to the science news outlet EOS, Labe warned that "the loss of the Arctic Report Card would be significant not only for the scientific community, but also for decision-makers and the public."
"Written for a broad audience and developed by more than 100 scientists from around the world, the report is an important resource for consistently documenting changes in one of the fastest warming regions on our planet," Labe added. "Discontinuing it would create a significant gap in our ability to track and connect these changes from year to year, with implications for people and communities around the world."
Last year's edition of the report card found that "surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900."
"The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic," the report observed.
The Trump administration, packed with fossil fuel industry allies and headed by a climate denier, has worked aggressively to gut federal initiatives designed to track the worsening impact of the global climate emergency. Since taking power last year, the administration has dismissed government scientists, scrubbed climate information from federal websites, stopped updating a database that tracked the country's costliest weather disasters, and picked a climate denier to oversee the federal government's flagship climate report.
Rick Thoman, an Arctic climate specialist, called the Trump administration's latest move "devastating news for Arctic environmental monitoring."
Keep ReadingShow Less
July Was Hottest Month in History of Contiguous US, Breaking Dust Bowl Record
"If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble," warned one meteorologist.
Aug 10, 2026
While President Donald Trump continued his war on renewables and support for climate-wrecking fossil fuels, the contiguous United States endured the hottest July on record, according to data released Monday by his own government.
"July 2026 averaged 76.9ºF, the warmest month on record (1895-present)," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced. That figure was "3.3ºF above the 20th-century average. This was the warmest July—and warmest month—in the 132-year record, 0.1-0.2ºF warmer than July 1936 and July 2012."
The Associated Press highlighted that last month's average for the Lower 48 eclipsed "the Dust Bowl's July 1936 by an eighth of a degree," a development that meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections described as alarming.
"It's not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case," he told the AP. "And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the US—just a cataclysmic event in US history. If we're exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we're in deep trouble."
Separately, Masters and fellow meteorologist Bob Henson wrote at Yale Climate Connections that "there's no denying the scorching conditions of the 1930s Dust Bowl. An impressive 24 of the 48 contiguous US states have yet to exceed the single hottest readings observed in each of those states during the 1930s."
"However, the Dust Bowl has been misused for years in climate-denial writing and speaking to argue that human activity isn't warming the nation's climate to any great degree. In fact, human influence played a vast part in the Dust Bowl itself," they explained. "Decades of overplowing by European settlers in the Plains and Midwest—in the erroneous belief that 'rain follows the plow'—left the landscape vulnerable when a sequence of multi-year droughts struck. Huge volumes of topsoil simply blew away, and the denuded land heated up far more quickly than better-managed land would have. The Dust Bowl intersected with the Great Depression to make the 1930s a period of profound misery for millions of Americans."
"A 2022 study, 'How the Great Plains Dust Bowl drought spread heat extremes around the Northern Hemisphere,' showed how the Dust Bowl's physical influence extended well beyond US borders," the pair added. "As lead author Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research put it, 'This is a mechanism that arose in a unique way from human influence—not by burning fossil fuels but from plowing up the middle third of the US.'"
We just broke a heat record set during the Dust Bowl. 😬That record has been a favorite talking point of climate deniers. Now it's bitten the dust: yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/the-...New from @drjeffmasters.bsky.social and @bhensonweather.bsky.social
[image or embed]
— Yale Climate Connections (@climateconnections.bsky.social) August 10, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Wildfires broke out across Canada and in the United States' Pacific Northwest last month, burning over 140,000 acres in Oregon alone. NOAA found that "daytime maximum temperatures averaged 89.5ºF, 2.9ºF above average, ranking as the sixth-warmest month on record for average high temperatures, while overnight minimum temperatures averaged 64.2ºF, 3.7ºF above average, ranking as the warmest month on record for average low temperatures, surpassing July 2022 by 0.7ºF."
Those high temperatures overnight can be dangerous. Masters told the AP that "if you're talking heatwaves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress... So if it doesn’t cool off at night, your body doesn't have time to readjust to all the heat."
While July set a new record in the United States, because of the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, "this may be one of the coolest years we’re gonna experience for the rest of our lives," the meteorologist also said. He added that humanity needs "to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we've put in place."
Wildfires also impacted the European Union last month—and NOAA's new numbers came out as the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Monday that worldwide, last month was second warmest July on record, tied with 2024. The agency also found that the average global ocean surface temperature was the hottest ever recorded in July, fueled in part by El Niño conditions.
"Our leaders’ response has to be swifter and stronger than El Niño," argued Anne Jellema, executive director of the advocacy group 350.org. "We already know that global heating is supercharging extreme weather damage, and the public wants polluters to pay for it. With Big Oil's earnings skyrocketing while a global food crisis looms, now is the time to act. The only way to stave off a humanitarian disaster is to make those causing it pay upfront—before even more damage is done."
The Guardian pointed out that "an unusually strong El Niño event, a periodic climate feature where a section of the Pacific Ocean heats up causing weather around the world to alter, is likely to cause next year to be the hottest on record globally, surpassing a record set just in 2024. Some scientists think the developing El Niño could even ensure that this year is the one that breaks the record."
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the newspaper that "the bottom line... is that we expect to set record global temperatures as long as carbon emissions continue to warm the planet, and typically these records are set during major El Niño events."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Endured Hottest March on Record as Experts Warned of 'Nonsurvivable' Heatwaves
"Dangerous climate breakdown is already here, and killing people—now, today."
Apr 09, 2026
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed Thursday that last month—which featured a heatwave that cooked the US West and caused a snow drought—was the hottest March in the 132-year record for the contiguous United States.
The average temperature "was 50.85°F, 9.35°F above the 20th-century average, marking the first time any month's average has exceeded 9°F above that baseline," according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. NCEI also said April 2025-March 2026 was the warmest 12-month span observed for the Lower 48 since recordkeeping began in 1895, and over half of the area had its hottest single March day on record, dating back to 1950.
"Maximum daytime temperatures were especially high, averaging 11.4°F above the March average and 0.9°F above the April long-term average," NCEI noted. "Ten states recorded their warmest March on record: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Across all of these states, average temperatures exceeded their respective April averages, with California also eclipsing its average May temperature by 0.7°F."
(Image by NOAA NCEI)
In a social media thread about the findings, Shel Winkley, the senior engagement specialist and meteorologist at Climate Central, stressed that "our overheating planet played a major role."
"Out of 192 cities analyzed by Climate Central, 111 experienced at least one week of heat made [more than two times] more likely by human-caused warming," he noted. "The Southwest averaged 25 out of 31 days with heat made at least two times more likely."
The "most staggering" statistic, he said, is that "on March 20, 29% of the Lower 48 saw heat made [more than five times] more likely by our warming atmosphere. Put simply: Heat that would be virtually impossible without that fingerprint."
⚠️ Most staggering stat:
On March 20, 29% of the lower 48 saw heat made 5x+ more likely by our warming atmosphere.
Put simply: heat that would be virtually impossible without that fingerprint.
Largest climate-influenced area on record since at least 1970 pic.twitter.com/1Nsjvpj5jX
— Shel Winkley (@shelwinkleywx) April 9, 2026
Winkley told The Associated Press that "what we experienced in March across the United States was unprecedented," while Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters said that the new batch of broken records "tells us that climate change is kicking our butts."
The "January through March period was the driest on record for the contiguous US. So not only was it hot, it was record dry as well," Masters said. "And that's a bad combination for water availability, for agriculture, for river levels, for navigation."
Looking ahead, NOAA warned that "drought is expected to persist and expand across much of the interior West, Southwest, Rockies, and High Plains, as well as parts of the South, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic... Significant wildland fire potential is above normal across portions of the Southwest, southern Plains, and central High Plains, and much of the Deep South and Southeast."
The AP also pointed out that both the US agency and Europe's Copernicus are "forecasting a 'super' strong El Niño to form in a few months and intensify into the winter. Meteorologists expect that to increase already warm temperatures across the globe, likely pushing past the hottest year mark set by 2024."
Already, as governments across the globe, including the Big Oil-backed Trump administration, refuse to take the actions that the scientific community argues are necessary to address the climate emergency—most notably, swiftly shift away from planet-warming fossil fuels—humanity is contending with deadly conditions during heatwaves.
For a study published last month in the journal Nature Communications, researchers examined heatwaves in Mecca, Saudi Arabia (2024); Bangkok, Thailand (2024); Phoenix, Arizona, the United States (2023); Mount Isa, Australia (2019); Larkana, Pakistan (2015); and Seville, Spain (2003). During each, they found spans of "nonsurvivable" conditions for people ages 65 and older in direct sun.
"My first thought was, 'Oh shit'—I really didn't expect to see that, especially when you zoom in to individual cities," Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, the study's lead author and a professor at the Australian National University, told The Guardian in reporting published Wednesday. "If it's already happening now, then what does a future that is two or three degrees warmer hold?"
Sharing the report on social media, Bill McGuire, a volcanologist and emeritus professor at University College London, said, "As some of us have been saying for quite a while, dangerous climate breakdown is already here, and killing people—now, today."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Changes in the Heart of Winter': NOAA Report Documents Warmest Arctic Year on Record
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report contributors said.
Dec 17, 2025
The Arctic just experienced its warmest air temperatures on record between October 2024 and September 2025 as the climate crisis dramatically alters the region, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found in its 20th Arctic Report Card.
The annual report, released Tuesday, also notes the Arctic's lowest maximum sea-ice extent and its wettest year on record. The past 10 years have been the warmest recorded in a region that is heating at two to four times the global average.
"After 20 years of continuous reporting, the Report Card stands as a chronicle of change and a caution for what the future will bring," report editors Matthew Langdon Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman, and Twila A. Moon wrote in the executive summary. "Transformations over the next 20 years will reshape Arctic environments and ecosystems, impact the well-being of Arctic residents, and influence the trajectory of the global climate system itself, which we all depend on."
Arctic warming is not confined to the spring and summer months, but marks a full-year transformation, with fall 2024 being the warmest Arctic fall on record and winter 2025 the second-warmest winter. While snow levels do remain high in the winter months, they consistently drop by June, with snow cover during that month now about half of 1960s levels. Precipitation in the winter months is also not limited to snow.
"We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
At sea, ice extent is also shrinking in the winter, with March 2025 seeing the lowest maximum sea-ice extent in nearly 50 years of satellite data. The oldest, thickest ice has shrunk by over 95% since the 1980s, and its domain has constricted to areas north of Greenland and the Canadian archipelago.
“There’s been a steady decline in sea ice and unfortunately we are seeing rain now even in winter,” Druckenmiller told the Guardian. “We are seeing changes in the heart of winter, when we expect the Arctic to be cold. The whole concept of winter is being redefined in the Arctic.”
Warming temperatures are also driving changes in ecosystems, with more southern species and conditions shifting northward both on land and at sea. On land, this happens via the "greening" of the tundra and the spread of boreal species into the Arctic. At sea, warmer, saltier water is shifting north, driving the "Atlantification" of the Arctic, which exacerbates ice melt and threatens to destabilize ocean circulation patterns.
Changes are also occurring on the Pacific side of the Arctic Ocean, with Arctic species declining by two-thirds in the northern Bering Sea and one-half in the Chukchi Sea.
“We are no longer just documenting warming—we are witnessing an entire marine ecosystem transform within a single generation,” Hannah-Marie Ladd, director of the Indigenous Sentinels Network on the Aleut community of Saint Paul Island, said at a conference unveiling the report.
Ocean warming, the melting of glaciers, and melting permafrost are increasing weather hazards and other dangers for Arctic communities. For example, warm ocean temperatures fueled ex-Typhoon Halong in October 2025, which forced over 1,500 people to evacuate from Alaska's southwestern coast and nearly destroyed two villages.
Glacier melt has increased the risk of sudden flooding and landslides, while the melting of permafrost is leading to the phenomenon of "rusting rivers," as oxidized iron from melting permafrost enters the water and degrades water quality.
These impacts aren't limited to the Arctic. The Greenland ice sheet, for example, lost 129 billion tons of sea ice, which contributes to global sea-level rise.
“We are seeing cascading impacts from a warming Arctic,” Climate Central scientist Zack Labe told the Guardian. “Coastal cities aren’t ready for the rising sea levels, we have completely changed the fisheries in the Arctic, which leads to rising food bills for seafood. We can point to the Arctic as a far away place but the changes there affect the rest of the world.”
The report comes as the Trump administration has moved to censure federal climate scientists and cut staffing and funding for government science.
Outside researchers noted that the administration did not seem to have significantly altered the content of the 2025 Arctic Report Card.
“I honestly did not see much of a tone shift in comparison to previous Arctic report cards in years past, which was great to see,” Climate Central media director Tom Di Liberto told NBC News. “The implications of their findings are the same as past Arctic report cards. The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine.”
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic."
Druckenmiller also told reporters that the team “did not receive any political interference with our results.”
However, the 2024 Arctic Report Card urged a "global reductions of fossil fuel pollution," in its subhead, an exhortation missing from the 2025 version.
The 2025 report did refer to the impacts of federal funding cuts, discussing "vulnerabilities and risks facing nationally and internationally coordinated observing programs, especially amid risks of diminishing US investments in climate and environmental observations," as Druckenmiller, Thoman, and Moon wrote.
"The Trump administration’s cuts to budgets, staffing, and resources for science are already affecting data and research related to the Arctic," the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) posted on social media in response to the release.
However, even if the report did not highlight the causes of the climate emergency, it's ultimate message was unmistakable, UCS said: "It’s clear that fossil fueled climate change is having an alarming effect on the vital signs of this unique, crucial region of the world."
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Hurricane Erin Bears Down, FEMA Still Holding Up Millions in Funds for North Carolina
"Trump's reckless actions have left Americans vulnerable and unprepared," said a senior adviser at Climate Power.
Aug 21, 2025
As Hurricane Erin batters the East Coast, North Carolina has been left in the lurch by a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) badly battered by the Trump administration.
WRAL reported Tuesday that the Tar Heel State is still waiting on $13 million in federal disaster preparedness grants from FEMA.
This is on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars in recovery funds for last year's devastating Hurricane Helene, which the agency has promised but not yet delivered.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein told reporters Tuesday that $85 million would begin flowing from FEMA to the state to fund recovery from Helene.
That announcement came after Stein sent US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a letter in July asking why she had not signed off on the disbursal of the desperately needed funds.
"Applications submitted as far back as February 2025 remain without a final decision," Stein wrote in the letter, which laid out $209 million worth of Helene recovery projects still awaiting her sign-off. "Further delay of these funds keeps communities and families in limbo, all while we are in another dangerous hurricane season."
Even though some funds are reportedly flowing, Stein says the government has yet to reimburse North Carolina for over $100 million.
"It creates real financial strain, especially on local governments, but also the state," Stein said in a press conference.
Noem's leadership of FEMA came under severe scrutiny earlier this summer after it was reported that her policies hampered the agency's ability to respond to the devastating flooding that killed at least 138 people in Texas.
In June, Noem introduced a new policy requiring all FEMA expenditures over $100,000 to be personally approved by her, which officials within the agency said led to the deployment of search and rescue teams being delayed for days.
Two-thirds of the phone calls from desperate Texans to FEMA also went unanswered after Noem allowed hundreds of contractors to be laid off just a day after the storm hit.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has implemented massive staff cuts to the agencies responsible for hurricane preparedness.
It laid off hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) storm laboratory, including hurricane hunters and researchers.
Nearly half of the National Weather Service (NWS)'s forecasting offices have been left critically understaffed, with around a quarter lacking a meteorologist-in-charge.
On the ground, there are about 20% fewer permanent FEMA staff responsible for responding to hurricanes and other disasters. Emergency training for those who remained on the job was also rolled back.
Sarah Galvez, Climate Power's senior adviser for climate urgency, says that communities in the path of Hurricane Erin "are being put at risk thanks to the Trump Administration gutting the forecasting that people rely on during extreme weather."
Since 1980, as the planet has warmed, the number of significant hurricanes (classified as Category 3 or greater) has doubled. In recent years, they have also begun to intensify more rapidly as they approach landfall, giving forecasters less time to catch them and residents less time to respond.
But as part of a multi-pronged assault on climate science, Trump has also made it harder to track these and other disasters. In May, NOAA announced that it would no longer track the number of disasters resulting in over $1 billion in damage.
"Fueled by the climate crisis," Galvez says, "major hurricanes are only becoming more frequent and severe, but Trump's reckless actions have left Americans vulnerable and unprepared."
On Tuesday, Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) introduced legislation aimed at rolling back Trump's cuts to these agencies.
Hurricane Erin is hitting the East Coast right now.Earlier this year, Trump slashed funding for FEMA and NOAA — the agencies that keep us safe before and after disasters. My new bill would reverse Trump's cuts and restore crucial resources for families across the country.
— Congressman Greg Casar (@repcasar.bsky.social) August 20, 2025 at 1:12 PM
"As we continue to face increasing numbers of natural disasters across our country—wildfires, floods, hurricanes—it's critically important that we equip our communities with the resources they need," Neguse said. "Whether it's the preparedness programs run by NOAA and NWS, or the response and recovery initiatives managed by FEMA, our federal agencies play a crucial role in addressing the increasing frequency of disasters."
Keep ReadingShow Less
100+ People Dead in Texas—Just 2 Months After Former National Weather Service Chiefs Warned of 'Nightmare' Scenario
While the agency and outside meteorologists say the NWS provided timely and accurate forecasts, the fatal flooding is generating fresh alarm about cuts and open positions.
Jul 07, 2025
As the official death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas ticked above 100 on Monday, concerns over vacancies as well as job and potential funding cuts at the National Weather Service continued to mount—even as the NWS and independent meteorologists insisted that the agency had "issued timely warnings in advance of the deadly floods."
The flooding came just over two months after all living former directors of the NWS published a letter sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 and its cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of the NWS in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The five men—Louis Uccellini, Jack Hayes, Brig. Gen. D.L. Johnson, Brig. Gen. John J. Kelly Jr., and E.W. "Joe" Friday—wrote on May 2 that "even if the National Weather Service remains level funded, given the interconnectedness of all of the parts of NOAA, there will be impacts to weather forecasting as well. We cannot let this happen."
"These proposed cuts come just days after approximately 300 National Weather Service... employees left the public service to which they had devoted their lives and careers," the ex-directors pointed out. "That's on top of the approximately 250 NWS employees who were fired as a result of their probationary status in new—often higher-level positions—or took the initial buyout offered by the Trump administration in early February."
"That leaves the nation's official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit—down more than 10% of its staffing—just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes," they continued. "Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life. We know that's a nightmare shared by those on the forecasting frontlines—and by the people who depend on their efforts."
Discussing recent job reductions with The Associated Press on Monday, Uccellini, whose tenure leading NWS included Trump's first term, warned that "this situation is getting to the point where something could break."
"The people are being tired out, working through the night and then being there during the day because the next shift is short-staffed," he said. "Anything like that could create a situation in which important elements of forecasts and warnings are missed."
For the flooding in Texas, the NWS Austin-San Antonio office had five meteorologists working, rather than two, as part of its "surge staffing" protocol.
However, Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS Employees Organization, a union that represents government workers, also told NBC News that the agency's Austin-San Antonio office does not have a permanent science officer, who conducts training for and implements new technology, or a warning coordination meteorologist, who has contact with media.
That office "is operating with 11 staff meteorologists and is down six employees from its typical full staffing level of 26," NBC reported. The nearby San Angelo office "is short four staff members from its usual staffing level of 23. The meteorologist-in-charge position—the office's top leadership position—is not permanently filled. The office is also without a senior hydrologist."
Despite some open positions at the two offices, the NWS began warning of potential flooding as early as Thursday morning, and as conditions worsened overnight, the agency issued its first warning for "life-threatening flash flooding" for parts of Kerr County at 1:14 am Central Time Friday, according to CNN.
"But questions remain about how many people they reached, whether critical vacancies at the forecast offices could have affected warning dissemination, and if so-called warning fatigue had been growing among residents in a region described as one of the most dangerous in the country for flash flooding," the network noted.
As Fahy put it to Politico: "The crux of this disaster is a failure of the last mile of communication... The forecasts went out, they communicated the forecasts, they disseminated the watches and warnings. And the dilemma we have is there was nobody listening at 4 o'clock in the morning for these watches and warnings."
Wisconsin-based meteorologist Chris Vagasky similarly told NBC that "the forecasting was good. The warnings were good. It's always about getting people to receive the message... It appears that is one of the biggest contributors—that last mile."
As The New York Times reported:
In an interview, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, said the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive, and local residents are resistant to new spending.
"Taxpayers won't pay for it," Mr. Kelly said. Asked if people might reconsider in light of the catastrophe, he said, "I don't know."
As of Monday evening, 104 people are confirmed dead, most of them in Kerr County, which includes Camp Mystic, a Christian all-girls summer camp that lost at least 27 campers and counselors. The AP reported that "search-and-rescue teams carried on with the search for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task."
In a statement to multiple news outlets, the NWS provided a detailed timeline of its alerts. The agency also said that it "is heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County" and "remains committed to our mission to serve the American public through our forecasts and decision support services."
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Monday sent a letter to Roderick Anderson, acting inspector general at the Department of Commerce, urging an investigation into "the scope, breadth, and ramifications of whether staffing shortages at key local National Weather Service... stations contributed to the catastrophic loss of life and property during the deadly flooding."
"The roles left unfilled are not marginal, they're critical," he emphasized. "These are the experts responsible for modeling storm impacts, monitoring rising water levels, issuing flood warnings, and coordinating directly with local emergency managers about when to warn the public and issue evacuation orders. To put it plainly: They help save lives."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at him and reporters for such scrutiny on Monday, saying that "unfortunately, in the wake of this once-in-a-generation natural disaster, we have seen many falsehoods pushed by Democrats such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and some members of the media. Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie, and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning."
In addition to the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency—previously led by billionaire Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth—pushing layoffs and retirements, Trump's administration is working to boost fossil fuels that drive the global climate emergency.
As Common Dreams reported earlier Monday, a study published by ClimaMeter found that the floods in Texas were caused by "very exceptional meteorological conditions" that cannot be explained merely by natural variability.
Former Common Dreams staff writer Kenny Stancil is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, which has documented "Trump's attacks on disaster preparedness and response."
"The deadly Texas floods will not be the last manifestation of extreme weather turbocharged by fossil fuel pollution," Stancil wrote in a Monday blog post. "In an era of escalating climate threats, we need a stronger public sector with more resources to mitigate risks, help people weather storms, and adapt to the future."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'These Deaths Are on Trump's Hands': Texas Flooding Spotlights Assault on Climate Science
"The Trump regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons, at the very time we need a much better understanding of it," said one environmentalist. "This is so reckless and dangerous."
Jul 07, 2025
Deadly flooding caused by torrential rain in central Texas late last week called attention to U.S. President Donald Trump's full-scale assault on the climate research and monitoring agencies tasked with studying and predicting such weather catastrophes, as well as his ongoing attacks on disaster preparedness and relief.
Though local National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters did issue warnings in the lead-up to Friday's flooding—which killed at least 82 people, including dozens of children—key roles were reportedly vacant ahead of the downpour, prompting scrutiny of the Trump administration's mass firings and budget cuts, in addition to years of neglect and failures by Republicans at the state level.
Asked whether he believes the federal government should hire back terminated meteorologists in the wake of the Texas flooding, Trump responded in the negative and falsely claimed that "very talented people" at NWS "didn't see" the disaster coming.
"This is an absolute lie," replied meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus. "Worse, this is the person responsible for making those kids less safe and he's trying to deny the damage he caused."
Holthaus wrote Sunday that Trump's staffing cuts "have particularly hit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Modeling Center, which aims to improve the skill of these types of difficult forecasts."
"Though it's unclear to what extent staffing shortages across the NWS complicated the advance notice that local officials had of an impending flooding disaster," he added, "it's clear that this was a complex, compound tragedy of a type that climate warming is making more frequent."
"Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis."
Under the guise of "government efficiency," the Trump administration has taken an axe to staff at federal climate agencies and is trying to go even further with its budget for the coming fiscal year. The Washington Post noted Sunday that "a budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers' hands."
"But even just the specter of President Donald Trump's budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts," the Post noted. "Trump's efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government's scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here."
Since the start of his second term, Trump has dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who were working on the National Climate Assessment, moved to slash NOAA's workforce, and announced a halt to climate disaster tracking, among other changes—all while working to accelerate fossil fuel extraction and use that is supercharging extreme weather events. One NOAA veteran warned that Trump's cuts could drag the agency back to "the technical and proficiency levels we had in the 1950s."
"The Trump regime is gutting scientific research into climate and atmospheric science for political reasons, at the very time we need a much better understanding of it," environmentalist Stephen Barlow wrote on social media on Sunday. "This is so reckless and dangerous, which is why I suggest we call these tragedies Trump events."
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said over the weekend that "Republicans have fired meteorologists, cut emergency disaster aid, and given an extra $18 billion to the fossil fuel corporations causing this crisis."
"These deaths are on Trump's hands," she added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Ticking Time Bomb': Study Says Ocean Acidification Crossed Planetary Boundary
"We're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed," said one expert.
Jun 09, 2025
As this year's United Nations Ocean Conference began in France on Monday, scientists published a study showing that another "planetary boundary," or barriers that ensure the Earth is a "safe operating space for humanity," has been crossed.
Researchers said in 2023 that 6 of the 9 boundaries—biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, the climate, freshwater, land use, and novel entities—had been crossed. Last year, they issued a "red alert" about ocean acidification, the topic of the new study, Ocean Acidification: Another Planetary Boundary Crossed.
As the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains, humanity's burning of fossil fuels and land use changes have caused the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to soar, and the ocean absorbs some of it. The resulting chemical interactions make seawater more acidic.
In the new study, scientists from NOAA, Oregon State University, and the United Kingdom's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) wrote that "we improve upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary assessment and demonstrate that by 2020, the average global ocean conditions had already crossed into the uncertainty range of the ocean acidification boundary."
"This analysis was further extended to the subsurface ocean, revealing that up to 60% of the global subsurface ocean (down to 200 m) had crossed that boundary, compared to over 40% of the global surface ocean," they continued. "These changes result in significant declines in suitable habitats for important calcifying species, including 43% reduction in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, up to 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves."
"As our seas increase in acidity, we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on, and this, in turn, has major societal and economic implications."
The study's lead author, North-East Atlantic Ocean Acidification Hub chair and PML professor Helen Findlay, said in a Monday statement that "looking across different areas of the world, the polar regions show the biggest changes in ocean acidification at the surface. Meanwhile, in deeper waters, the largest changes are happening in areas just outside the poles and in the upwelling regions along the west coast of North America and near the equator."
"Most ocean life doesn't just live at the surface—the waters below are home to many more different types of plants and animals. Since these deeper waters are changing so much, the impacts of ocean acidification could be far worse than we thought," Findlay noted. "This has huge implications for important underwater ecosystems like tropical and even deep-sea coral reefs that provide essential habitats and nursing refuge for many species, in addition to the impacts being felt on bottom-dwelling creatures like crabs, sea stars, and other shellfish such as mussels and oysters."
Fellow PML professor and Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network co-chair Steve Widdicombe, who provided the study authors with comments on a draft, said Monday that "ocean acidification isn't just an environmental crisis—it's a ticking time bomb for marine ecosystems and coastal economies."
"As our seas increase in acidity, we're witnessing the loss of critical habitats that countless marine species depend on, and this, in turn, has major societal and economic implications," he warned. "From the coral reefs that support tourism to the shellfish industries that sustain coastal communities, we're gambling with both biodiversity and billions in economic value every day that action is delayed."
The 2024 Planetary Boundaries report showed 6/9 boundaries breached with the 7th, Ocean Acidification, in danger. A new study shows that this too has now been crossed. The implications are huge!onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...#climatechange #oceanacidification #planetaryboundaries #oceans
[image or embed]
— Dr Tom Harris (@drtomharris.bsky.social) June 9, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Costa Rica and France are co-hosting the U.N. summit in the French coastal city of Nice this week. The theme is "accelerating action and mobilizing all actors to conserve and sustainably use the ocean."
Greenpeace USA oceans campaign director John Hocevar, who will be attending the meeting, said Monday that "this conference couldn't come at a more critical time. The ocean is reeling from the combined impacts of industrial fishing, plastic pollution, and climate change. And just when bold leadership is most needed, the U.S. has walked away from the global stage, opening the floodgates to destruction through a barrage of Trump administration executive orders that threaten both domestic and international waters."
"We can't afford any more delay," he stressed. "The decisions made in Nice will set the tone for key global efforts to stem the ocean crisis in the coming months, including the plastics treaty, the global ocean treaty, and deep-sea mining talks at the International Seabed Authority. Whether this conference marks a turning point or takes our oceans further down the road to ruin will depend on the strength and ambition of the commitments made by the international community to stand up for science, uphold international law, and advance environmental justice."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's NOAA Will Stop Tracking Costliest Climate Disasters
"Their philosophy is, if we ignore it, it's not a problem," said one meteorologist.
May 08, 2025
On the heels of the news that higher-than-average temperatures continued globally in April, one of the United States' top science agencies announced Thursday that it will no longer update a database that tracks climate disasters that cause billions of dollars in damage.
As of Thursday, the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) website was replaced with a message saying there have been no such events in 2025 through April 8.
That flies in the face of an analysis by the National Centers for Environmental Information, which has maintained the database and said before it was taken down that six to eight billion-dollar climate disasters have happened so far this year, including the wildfires that devastated parts of Los Angeles in January and caused an estimated $150 billion in damage.
The World Weather Attribution said in late January that planetary heating, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, caused weather conditions in Southern California that made the fires 35% more likely.
Hundreds of people have been laid off from NOAA in recent weeks as the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, has pushed to slash government spending, and those who have lost their jobs include scientists who helped maintain the database.
NOAA spokesperson Kim Doster told The Washington Post that in addition to staff changes, "evolving priorities" were also partially behind the retiring of the database, which will now show disasters that occurred only between 1980-2024.
Between 2020-24, the number of billion-dollar disasters averaged 23 per year, compared to just a few per year in the 1980s.
"This Trump administration move is the dumbest magic trick possible: covering their eyes and pretending the problem will go away if they just stop counting the costs. Households across the country already have to count these costs at their kitchen table as they budget for higher insurance costs and home repairs. Families and retirees dipping into their savings or going bankrupt to recover from wildfires and hurricanes know what disasters cost," said Carly Fabian, senior insurance policy advocate with Public Citizen's Climate Program. "Hiding the national tallies will only undermine our ability to prepare and respond to the climate crisis. Deleting the data will exacerbate the devastating delays in acting to slow climate change, and the impacts it is having on property insurance and housing costs."
NOAA's "evolving priorities" have also included decommissioning other datasets, including one tracking marine environments and one tracking ocean currents.
Without NOAA's Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, Jeremy Porter, co-founder of the climate risk financial modeling firm First Street, told CNN that "replicating or extending damage trend analyses, especially at regional scales or across hazard types, is nearly impossible without significant funding or institutional access to commercial catastrophe models."
"What makes this resource uniquely valuable is not just its standardized methodology across decades, but the fact that it draws from proprietary and nonpublic data sources (such as reinsurance loss estimates, localized government reports, and private claims databases) that are otherwise inaccessible to most researchers," he said.
Chris Gloninger, a meteorologist who resigned from an Iowa news station after receiving threats for his frank, science-based coverage of climate disasters, said the retiring of the database suggests the Trump administration is "okay with spending billions of dollars on disasters."
"Every dollar that we spend on mitigation or adaptation saves $13 in recovery costs," said Gloninger. "But their philosophy is, if we ignore it, it's not a problem."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy