A Public Archive of Climate Data

1,400 Words / 6 min. Read‍

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. This cognitive skill typically develops in infants around 8 months of age and is a crucial milestone in child development.1

‍2025 has been a disastrous year for climate science in America.2 The 47th presidential administration has fired hundreds of scientists,3,4 starved programs and departments of funding,5,6 rolled back dozens of environmental regulations,7,8 undermined the tracking of hurricanes and extreme weather,9,10 and has taken down hundreds of federal websites, pages, references and data sets related to climate change.11,12 This ideological purge of climate research aligns closely with the goals of Project 2025, which broadly views climate science and policy as part of a left-wing cultural agenda, as well as an impediment to free markets and economic growth.13

Many of these actions have been fast-tracked via executive orders,14 despite the vast majority of Americans opposing these actions.15 Even keeping track of these developments is an overwhelming task; Columbia University has identified over 200 measures taken to scale back or eliminate federal climate mitigation in the first half of 2025 alone.16 This only worsens with the passage of H.R. 1;17 among the many critical programs and facilities at risk is the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which has been measuring atmospheric CO2 since 1958.18

These actions demonstrate a level of reasoning akin to that of an infant.1 Defunding and deleting research doesn’t have any impact on climate change; it only impedes our ability to mitigate and adapt to it.19,20

The solar observatory at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
Source: Jonathan Kingston, National Geographic

What can we do about it?

Our mission here at The Reliance School is to help you understand and prepare for threats like climate change by providing clear and actionable information. As information becomes harder to access, that mission feels more important than ever.

In early 2025, we began backing up data sets, reports, and research papers in the event that they were taken down. When the NCA5 went dark in July, we decided it was time to make this archive accessible to the public.

Here in this post we’ve collected as much of that information as we could, which you can access via the links in the sections below. The more of us that download and share this information, the harder it will be to suppress. We’ll continue to update this collection as news emerges; if there’s any important information we’ve overlooked, please let us know!

Data Sets

These data sets are mostly in tabular formats, and it can take a little work to make them more accessible. To help with this, we’ve created interactive maps for the Future Risk Index and Social Vulnerability Index, and we've mapped NCA5 projections for 1.5°C of warming and 2°C of warming in previous posts.

You can find NCA5 projections for 3°C, the EPA Cumulative Resilience Screening Index, the FEMA National Risk Index, and the Climate Impact Lab's economic projections in our free collection of climate risk maps.

You can access these data sets at the links above, and via:

‍Google Drive

‍Proton Drive (password: relianceschool)

‍FEMA’s Future Risk Index data was removed from the National Risk Index in February 2025;21 thank you to Fulton Ring for making the data publicly available on GitHub.22 The Social Vulnerability and Environmental Justice Indexes were removed from the CDC website in February 202523,24 and later restored by court order.25,26 The NCA5 data atlas was taken down along with the USGCRP website in July of 2025,27 and NOAA has stopped tracking billion-dollar disasters as of 2025.28 All other data sets are still live, so we’ve pre-emptively archived them for posterity.

A chart of billion-dollar climate disasters from 1980-2024.
Source: NOAA

Institutional Reports

Here we’ve archived reports from governmental and private institutions, as multiple federal websites with a focus on climate change (including climate.gov and globalchange.gov) have recently been shut down.29,30 Additionally, many major corporations have begun “complying in advance” by removing references to diversity, equity, climate change, and environmental justice from their websites.31,32,33

You can access these reports at the links above, and via:

‍Google Drive

‍Proton Drive (password: relianceschool)

‍We’ve included additional reports from the EAT-Lancet Commission, the Post Carbon Institute, the Senate Budget Committee, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Exeter. The majority of these reports are still accessible on their respective websites, but we’ve pre-emptively archived them for safety (and to create a central repository for this information).

A map of extreme weather conditions associated with very large fires.
Source: USGCRP

Research Papers

In this section we’ve collected research papers on climate change, with a specific focus on adaptation, resilience, and catastrophic risk. Most papers we’ve selected have been published from 2020 onwards.

You can access these research papers at the links above, and via:

‍Google Drive

‍Proton Drive (password: relianceschool)

‍All of these papers are currently accessible via their publishers’ websites, but we’ve pre-emptively archived them as many academic & research institutions are at risk of losing federal funding for climate science.34,35

A series of graphs showing human activities related to climate change.
Source: Ripple et al.

Tools for Tracking

Here are some tools we’ve used to stay aware of actions taken to suppress and censor climate science. The Project 2025 Tracker compares government policy to the goals outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, while Columbia’s Climate Backtracker and Harvard’s Regulatory & Environmental Justice trackers identify steps taken by the administration to change or eliminate federal climate policies.

Project 2025 Tracker

Climate Backtracker

Regulatory Tracker

Environmental Justice Tracker

Public Environmental Data Partners is a coalition of nonprofits, archivists and researchers who are working to ensure that climate and environmental data remains available to the public. The Data Rescue Project and the Southern Environmental Law Center also maintain archives of federal climate data. You can access these archives and support their work via the links below:

Data + Screening Tools

Data Rescue Project

Archived Federal Environmental Data

Footnotes & References

  1. Object Permanence (Saul McLeod, SimplyPsychology)
  2. More than 1,900 scientists write letter in ‘SOS’ over Trump’s attacks on science (Jessica Glenza, The Guardian)
  3. Trump administration fires staff for flagship U.S. climate assessment (Paul Voosen, Science)
  4. Hundreds of weather forecasters fired in latest wave of DOGE cuts (Seth Borenstein, Associated Press)
  5. The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies (James Temple, MIT Technology Review)
  6. Trump Releases Budget Proposal That Would Would Slash Funding for Climate Programs (Columbia Law School)
  7. Years of Climate Action Demolished in Days: A Timeline (Mark Gongloff, Elaine He, Bloomberg)
  8. EPA announces dozens of environmental regulations it plans to target (Michael Copley, Jeff Brady, Camila Domonoske, NPR)
  9. Proposed Trump Cuts to NOAA Threaten Hurricane Hunters and Toxic Algal Bloom Monitoring (Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American)
  10. Trump admin ends extreme weather database that has tracked cost of disasters since 1980 (Andrew Freedman, CNN)
  11. Trump Administration Removing Climate Information from Government Websites (Rachel Santarsiero, National Security Archive)
  12. Scientists brace ‘for the worst’ as Trump purges climate mentions from websites (Oliver Milman, The Guardian)
  13. Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership (The Heritage Foundation)
  14. Trump reverses climate policies on first day in office (Clare Zhang, American Physical Society)
  15. Trump’s climate research cuts are unpopular, even with Republican voters (Karin Kirk, Yale Climate Connections)
  16. Climate Backtracker (Columbia Law School)
  17. Republicans’ Megabill Will Put U.S. Climate Goals Out of Reach (Zack Colman, Scientific American)
  18. Mauna Loa Observatory captured the reality of climate change. The US plans to shut it down (Alex Sen Gupta, Katrin Meissner, Timothy Raupach, The Conversation)
  19. As climate science disappears from government websites, here’s how to still access the data (Fast Company)
  20. The Trump Administration’s Deletion of Environmental Justice Data Does Real Harm (Stacy Woods, Union of Concerned Scientists)
  21. FEMA Removed Future Risk Index (Harvard Law School)
  22. FEMA Future Risk Index (Fulton Ring)
  23. CDC webpages go dark as Trump targets public health information (Carter Sherman, Jessica Glenza, The Guardian)
  24. Elimination of federal climate tools, some used to inquire in to Musk’s firms, sparks alarm (Delaney Nolan, The Guardian)
  25. Social Vulnerability Index (CDC)
  26. Environmental Justice Index (CDC)
  27. Top Website for Crucial U.S. Climate Information Goes Dark (Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American)
  28. Noaa to stop tracking cost of climate crisis-fueled disasters (The Guardian)
  29. NOAA’s Weather and Climate Science Is Under Relentless Attack from Trump Administration (Marc Alessi, Union of Concerned Scientists)
  30. Trump admin scraps NOAA’s climate website (Daniel Cusick, Politico)
  31. Here Are All The Companies Rolling Back DEI Programs (Conor Murray, Forbes)
  32. US companies scale back and modify diversity policies after Trump's order (Reuters)
  33. These Companies Are Backtracking on Climate in Bow to Conservatives (Martina Igini, Earth.org)
  34. Universities Reeling from Trump Cuts Fear for a ‘Lost Generation’ of Scientists (Corbin Hiar, Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American)
  35. Climate Researchers Wait for the Ax to Fall (Ariel Wittenberg, Chelsea Harvey, Scientific American)

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