Public-domain data let fired NOAA staff rebuild Climate.gov as Climate.us

After the Trump administration’s cuts to NOAA funding pulled Climate.gov offline, three former agency employees—Rebecca Lindsey, her sister Mary Lindsey, and Anna Eshelman—rebuilt it as Climate.us. The successor site preserves more than 15 years of climate records: interactive maps, educational materials, indicator reports, and the Fifth National Climate Assessment, the government’s most comprehensive climate analysis, which had been deleted and was at risk of vanishing from public access.

The rescue was only legally possible because U.S. government data is public domain by statute. With no permissive licensing, taking the site down would have effectively destroyed the datasets; instead, the same material could be lifted and rehosted elsewhere. The rebuilt site includes a climate dashboard tracking metrics like September Arctic sea-ice extent, teaching resources, and an archive of oral histories from people affected by climate change.

The effort is also fragile. Climate.us runs on donations rather than the tax funding that once supported the original, leaving a critical public resource dependent on volunteer stewardship. It’s a case study in open data as insurance against politically motivated erasure—and a reminder that community archives, however admirable, are a stopgap rather than a substitute for durable government infrastructure.