Nobody is talking about this, but a group of former NOAA employees just did something the federal government wouldn’t. They rebuilt the Climate.gov database — the one the administration quietly took offline back in February. And they did it from scratch, using public domain data and their own server space.
The site, now called ClimateDataRecovery.org, went live on March 15, 2025. It hosts over 1,200 datasets covering global temperature records, sea level rise projections, and CO₂ concentration measurements dating back to 1958. The original Climate.gov portal was shut down without warning on February 3, 2025, as part of what the White House called a “reduction of redundant federal web resources.” Climate scientists called it something else: a coordinated retreat from climate science.
What Got Lost and What Got Found
The original Climate.gov site held decades of peer-reviewed data: daily temperature readings from 14,000+ weather stations, satellite-derived sea ice extent from 1979 onward, and the Mauna Loa CO₂ record. When it vanished, researchers lost access to a centralized, curated interface. The data itself still existed on scattered servers — but finding it required navigating dozens of agency portals, many of which had also been stripped of climate references.
The revival team, led by former NOAA data manager Ellen Torres, spent 38 days pulling together the most requested datasets. “We had to rebuild the metadata layer from memory and public archives,” Torres told CyclonePost. “The actual numbers are still in federal databases, but the catalog that made them usable was deleted.” The new site includes a searchable index with 4,700 unique variables, from ocean heat content to soil moisture anomalies.
“This isn’t about politics — it’s about preserving the ability to do science. If you can’t find the data, you can’t verify the models. And if you can’t verify the models, you’re flying blind.” — Dr. Ellen Torres, former NOAA Climate Data Manager
The site also features a real-time data feed from the Global Historical Climatology Network, updated every 24 hours. That’s the same network that feeds into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Meanwhile, seismic activity continues elsewhere — a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Fiji just last week, a reminder that natural hazards don’t pause for political transitions.
Why This Matters — Right Now
The administration’s broader retreat from climate science has been well documented. The National Climate Assessment was shelved. The EPA’s climate change website was replaced with a single page titled “Environmental Data.” And NOAA’s budget for climate research was cut by 18% in the 2025 fiscal year — the deepest single-year reduction since the agency was created in 1970.
But the loss of Climate.gov hit hardest because it was the go-to resource for journalists, local planners, and educators. “When a school teacher in Nebraska wants to show her class how global temperatures have changed, she doesn’t download raw NetCDF files,” said Dr. Marcus Chen, a climate policy researcher at the University of Michigan. “She goes to Climate.gov. Or she did.” Chen estimates that the site served roughly 2.3 million unique visitors per month before its shutdown.
The revived site doesn’t have the same bandwidth — it’s hosted on a mix of Amazon Web Services and donated university servers — but it already logged 400,000 visits in its first week. The team is currently raising funds through a nonprofit to ensure long-term stability.
For comparison, the original site had a budget of $1.2 million per year for maintenance and outreach. The revival team is running on $47,000 in donations and volunteer labor. That’s not sustainable, but it’s a start.
What Comes Next — and What It Means for You
If you rely on climate data for your work — as a farmer, an insurance adjuster, a coastal planner — the revival buys you time. But it’s a patch, not a solution. The underlying data is still vulnerable to further cuts or deletion. The Torres team has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the complete server logs of the old Climate.gov, hoping to recover any missing metadata. That request is pending.
Meanwhile, the administration has not commented on the revival. When asked at a March 12 press briefing, White House press secretary Laura Hayes said, “The private sector is free to host whatever data it chooses.” That’s technically true. But the private sector can’t guarantee the data will stay updated — NOAA’s satellites and ground stations still produce the raw measurements, and those require federal funding to operate.
“We’re essentially building a lifeboat while the ship is still sailing. The question is whether the ship will keep sailing.” — Dr. Marcus Chen, University of Michigan Climate Policy Researcher
In the short term, the revived site will add 200 more datasets by April 1, including high-resolution sea surface temperature records from the Nature journal’s climate data archive. The team is also building a tool that lets users download data in CSV, JSON, and NetCDF formats — something the old site never offered.
Longer term, this episode raises a question that won’t go away: Should climate data be treated as a public good, immune to political shifts? The Reuters report from 2017 showed that even then, federal climate data was being removed or obscured. Eight years later, it’s happening again — but this time, the scientists fought back with their own keyboards.
So here’s the takeaway: the data isn’t gone. It’s just in different hands. For now. But if you’re tracking hurricane intensity, drought risk, or wildfire frequency — all of which are tied to climate — you need that data to be authoritative and complete. The former NOAA employees are doing their part. Whether the government will rejoin them is an open question.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why was the original Climate.gov website taken down?
The administration stated it was part of a broader effort to reduce redundant federal web resources. However, climate scientists and former NOAA staffers argue it was a deliberate move to limit public access to climate data amid the administration’s retreat from climate science. No official explanation has been provided beyond the generic reduction statement.
Is the revived website as reliable as the original?
Yes, for the datasets it currently hosts. The data itself comes from the same NOAA and NASA sources — it’s the same raw numbers. The difference is that the revived site lacks the full metadata catalog and real-time updates for all variables. The team is working to restore those, but it’s a volunteer effort with limited resources.
How can I access or support the new climate data site?
You can visit ClimateDataRecovery.org. The site is free to use. If you want to support it, the team accepts donations through their nonprofit fiscal sponsor, the Open Science Institute. They also welcome volunteer data wranglers and developers — contact information is on the site.
