NOAA told to search grant programs for climate-related terms
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Workers in front of monitors at a NOAA forecast center in College Park, Md. Photo: Michael A. McCoy/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Commerce Department has sent NOAA officials a broad set of keywords to search grants in ways that would cover most climate change-related projects.
Why it matters: NOAA is one of the world's top weather and climate agencies and provides funding to universities and researchers to improve the understanding and prediction of extreme weather and climate change.
- Any potential challenges to NOAA's peer-reviewed grants are "myopic and misguided," said Rick Spinrad, who led NOAA during the Biden administration.
Driving the news: The search is related to President Trump's recent executive orders, some of which were signed on his first day in office.
- It appears to be separate from DEI-related searches of internal NOAA websites conducted by Elon Musk's DOGE staff last week.
Zoom in: The list of keywords, a copy of which was seen by Axios, includes DEI-related language and terms pertaining to a range of Trump's executive orders to date.
- Commerce's interpretation of Trump's orders on environmental agreements and energy covers the terms "climate," "methane," "nitrous oxide," "greenhouse gas," "climate science," "carbon," the "Paris Agreement," and other terminology.
Reality check: It isn't clear what the administration intends to do with information gathered from the keyword searches or whether any funding may stop flowing to grants underway.
- Commerce officials and the White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
- Instructions contained with the keywords caution that funding cannot be cut off due to court action that temporarily prevents a broad funding freeze initially instituted by the White House from taking effect.
Yes, but: Steep funding cuts reported to be coming to the National Science Foundation — along with Project 2025's vision for a far smaller NOAA stripped of its climate change-related work and the rapid dismantling of USAID — have caused anxiety to spike throughout the oceans, atmospheric and space sciences communities.
According to a NOAA source who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, each of NOAA's divisions — referred to as line offices — have been tasked with searching their grants and any other outside funding support for the same set of keywords.
- This includes the Office of Atmospheric Research, as well as the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service and other entities.
- Information within the document indicates authorship was at Commerce, which oversees NOAA, including a career staff member and a politically appointed official.
The intrigue: The potential effects of the keyword searches are illustrated by an example of funding directed to NOAA for grants under the Biden climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
- That law funded a $575 million program of climate resilience grants, according to Spinrad.
- "If anything, these investments should be increased, not threatened," Spinrad said.
- The applications far outstripped demand, to the tune of billions of dollars, he told Axios.
- "By virtue of the name of the program, every grant undoubtedly includes the word 'climate,'" Spinrad said.
What they're saying: "A grant with the words 'climate' or 'carbon dioxide' in it is most likely tied to improving our ability to predict sea level rise, precipitation and temperature extremes, hurricane patterns, drought intensity, or flood frequency," Spinrad said.
- "These are not esoteric academic exercises but 'real world' applications focused on saving lives, protecting property, and ensuring economic viability."
The bottom line: The executive orders are being interpreted in ways that will provide the administration with a thorough accounting of NOAA's climate-related grants programs.
- How it uses that list remains to be seen.
Go deeper:
DOGE searches for DEI information at U.S. climate, oceans agency
