Ending of NOAA billion dollar climate disaster tracking another example of us becoming less prepared for a future affected by climate change.

Oct 23, 2025

I want to start off this column with an update on my post a few weeks ago about the National Science Foundation (NSF) terminating funding for AI2ES, an NSF research institute led by the University of Oklahoma to explore the use of artificial intelligence in the earth sciences. As I wrote back then, among other research AI2ES is doing foundational work exploring how AI can be effectively and properly used by meteorologists to improve forecast and warning services.

I was interviewed last week by National Public Radio science correspondent Katia Riddle for a story she was doing on AI2ES and the NSF funding decision. Her story aired yesterday evening on “All Things Considered,” and she was able to obtain a short statement for the story about the funding decision from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stating that the funding was terminated because AI2ES “wasted taxpayer funds to place climate change hysteria in AI models.”

I do not know what to even say to this, other than it strikes me as completely insane. I am extremely confident that nobody — and I mean nobody — in the meteorology community is doing anything to artificially “place climate change hysteria” (whatever that even means) into any models. Rather, what this decision does is further weaken our societal ability to effectively prepare for and respond to climate change that we know is happening.

Just yesterday, longtime hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy posted on BlueSky a preliminary analysis of model verification for the 2025 hurricane season to date, and found that the new Google DeepMind (GDM) AI system has performed the best for track and intensity forecasts. It is absolutely remarkable to me that a modeling technique so early in its development was able to perform so incredibly well, and further reinforces the idea that AI approaches have a unique potential to improve weather forecasts and warnings. The idea that we are intentionally reducing our investment in such promising new technology and potentially enabling other countries, e.g., China, to move ahead of us much more rapidly in this scientific area is absolutely mind numbing to me.

It is somewhat ironic that this news came out on the same day that the non-profit Climate Central released their first report on billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, finding that the first half of 2025 was the costliest on record, primarily due to the immense loss from the Los Angeles wildfires in January. This was a report that NOAA has done for years, but the project was terminated by the Trump Administration for the same “climate hysteria” rationale used to end NSF funding to AI2ES.

Again, for a variety of reasons — including climate change — weather and water disasters are becoming more damaging and impactful. In order to understand how they are impacting our society, we have to track the various events and their costs — and make the public aware of the impacts to our economy and society. While it is great that Climate Central has stepped into the void left by NOAA being ordered to stop this tracking, this is work that can and should be done by a federal entity. All of these various decisions by our government to reduce funding in science (and emergency management) are leaving us more vulnerable to the vagaries of weather disasters at a time when we should be doing everything in our power to become more able to anticipate these events and better able to respond to them.

As far as actual weather, what I discussed in my post last night about Tropical Storm Melissa is still pretty much on track. I will have more on the weather later today or tonight.