Welcome to this edition of Climate Shift, where we continue our examination of the rapidly evolving environmental policy landscape under the Trump administration. Today, we turn our attention to executive actions that are reshaping the federal environmental information infrastructure.
NOAA Dataset Decommissioning
A Major Shift in Federal Data Access
In a development that has sent ripples through the scientific community, NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has announced plans to decommission 14 datasets, products, and catalogs related to earthquakes and marine, coastal, and estuary science. According to the agency's notice published on April 16, 2025, these resources will be "decommissioned and will no longer be available" by early to mid-May 2025.
This move represents a significant departure from NOAA's typical data management practices. Historically, the agency has maintained continuity of information by merging or replacing outdated products rather than removing them entirely. For context, NOAA implemented only 7 such decommissionings in 2024 and 6 in 2023, making this current wave of removals particularly notable in both scale and approach.
Datasets Scheduled for Decommissioning
Marine and Coastal Resources
1. Estuarine Bathymetry
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This product contains detailed depth measurements for estuarine environments, crucial for understanding coastal flooding, habitat mapping, and ecosystem management.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
2. Coastline Extractor
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This map viewer tool allows researchers to extract coastline data for specific regions, essential for coastal planning, erosion studies, and sea level rise impact assessments.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
3. Shoreline/Coastline Resources
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
These webpages and databases provide comprehensive shoreline data used in coastal development planning, environmental impact assessments, and climate change adaptation strategies.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
4. NCEI Coastal Ecosystem Maps
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This product provides mapping of coastal ecosystems, critical for biodiversity studies, conservation planning, and environmental management.
Data supposedly "merged into the Gulf Data Atlas," though no confirmation of complete data transfer has been provided.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
5. NCEI Coastal Water Temperature Guide
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This guide provides historical coastal water temperature data essential for climate change research, fisheries management, and ecosystem monitoring.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
Geological Records
6. Index to Marine and Lacustrine Geological Samples (IMLGS)
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This product catalogs marine and lake sediment samples collected worldwide, an invaluable resource for paleoclimate research, geological studies, and oceanography.
The data will only be available through archive requests to ncei.info@noaa.gov, significantly increasing barriers to access.
Currently available at multiple URLs, including the web application and map viewer, all of which will be decommissioned.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
7. Total Sediment Thickness for the World's Oceans and Marginal Seas
Retirement date: May 12, 2025
This dataset provides crucial information about sediment thickness across global oceans, used in geological research, climate modeling, and resource assessment.
Both the main webpage and the Version 3 (GlobSed) webpage will be decommissioned.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
8. Geological History of the World's Oceanic Crust
Retirement date: May 12, 2025
This resource documents the geological evolution of oceanic crust, essential for understanding plate tectonics, marine geology, and Earth's climate history.
Both the main webpage and the "Age, spreading rates and spreading symmetry of the world's ocean crust" webpage will be decommissioned.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
9. Circum-Antarctic Paleobathymetry to 30° South: Present to 75my
Retirement date: May 12, 2025
This specialized dataset reconstructs Antarctic ocean depths over 75 million years, crucial for climate modeling, oceanographic research, and understanding ice sheet dynamics.
No replacement product announced.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
Seismic Data
10. Seismicity Catalog Collection
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This collection provides historical earthquake records essential for seismic risk assessment, geological research, and disaster preparedness.
The data will only be available through archive requests to ncei.info@noaa.gov, significantly increasing barriers to access.
Currently accessible at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/natural-hazards/tsunamis-earthquakes-volcanoes/earthquakes/cd-collection
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
11. Strong Motion Earthquake Data Values of Digitized Strong-Motion Accelerograms
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This dataset contains strong-motion earthquake readings crucial for structural engineering, seismic hazard assessment, and building code development.
The data will only be available through archive requests to ncei.info@noaa.gov, significantly increasing barriers to access.
Currently available at multiple URLs that will be decommissioned.
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
12. United States Earthquake Intensity Database
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This database contains earthquake intensity information dating back to 1638, a crucial historical record for seismology, risk assessment, and urban planning.
The data will only be available through archive requests to ncei.info@noaa.gov, significantly increasing barriers to access.
Currently accessible at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/natural-hazards/tsunamis-earthquakes-volcanoes/earthquakes/intensity-database-1638-1985
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
13. Thermal (geothermal) Hot Springs List for the United States
Retirement date: May 5, 2025
This catalog documents geothermal features across the United States, important for renewable energy research, geological studies, and natural resource management.
The data will only be available through archive requests to ncei.info@noaa.gov, significantly increasing barriers to access.
Currently accessible at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/natural-hazards/tsunamis-earthquakes-volcanoes/geothermal-energy
Contact: ncei.info@noaa.gov
Other Resources
14. Satellite Products and Services Review Board (SPSRB) website
Retirement date not specified
The NOAA notice states that "the information has been transferred to a google site already," though no specific URL is provided.
This administrative change represents a shift from government-hosted to commercial platform hosting.
Contact: nesdis.ocs.communications@noaa.gov
Timing and Context
The timing of this announcement bears scrutiny, coming just days after environmental and science organizations filed a lawsuit against the administration for removing climate and environmental justice information from federal websites. This pattern suggests a broader shift in how federal scientific data is being managed and made accessible to researchers, policymakers, and the public.
Gretchen Goldman, PhD, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, has characterized these removals as "tantamount to theft," emphasizing that "the public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets." Her statement highlights the fundamental tension at play: these resources represent both scientific tools and public assets.
Scientific Community Response
The scientific community has responded swiftly to preserve these datasets before they disappear. Across social media platforms, scientists are urging colleagues to download the endangered data to ensure continued access for analysis and research. This grassroots preservation effort underscores the value these datasets hold for ongoing scientific work and the concern that their removal could create significant gaps in our understanding of critical environmental systems.
Pattern Recognition: Beyond Individual Actions
When viewed alongside the methane emissions rule nullification we covered in our last issue, a clearer picture of the administration's environmental policy approach begins to emerge. Both actions – regulatory rollbacks via Congressional Review Act and the removal of federal scientific data – represent different facets of the same underlying shift away from climate-focused governance.
These parallel tracks of deregulation and data limitation work in tandem: as regulations are struck down through legislative mechanisms, the very information that demonstrates their necessity becomes less accessible. This creates a compound effect that extends beyond individual policy changes to reshape the foundational infrastructure of environmental governance.
What This Means for Stakeholders
For Researchers and Scientists
The imminent loss of these datasets creates urgent challenges for the scientific community. Beyond the immediate scramble to preserve data, researchers face longer-term questions about data continuity, citation, and validation. Studies relying on these resources may face replication challenges, and future work that would have built upon these datasets must now find alternative approaches.
For Policymakers and Advocates
The removal of federal environmental data complicates evidence-based policymaking and advocacy. Without readily accessible information about coastal ecosystems, marine environments, and seismic activity, building cases for protective policies becomes more challenging. This information vacuum may shift the balance of policy debates by altering the evidentiary landscape.
For Industry and Compliance Officers
For businesses operating in coastal and marine environments, the loss of these datasets may create new uncertainty in planning and risk assessment. Companies that have relied on NOAA data for compliance documentation, environmental impact assessments, and operational planning will need to identify alternative information sources or develop new approaches to environmental management.
What To Watch
As this situation develops, several key indicators will help clarify the full implications of these changes:
Legal Challenges: The success or failure of the recently filed lawsuit against data removal will establish important precedents for information access and transparency requirements.
Agency Justifications: How NOAA explains these decommissionings – whether as budget necessities, modernization efforts, or other rationales – will signal broader administration priorities.
Congressional Response: Whether oversight committees intervene in these executive actions could determine if checks and balances moderate this approach to environmental data management.
Scientific Workarounds: The effectiveness of community-driven data preservation efforts will reveal whether federal gatekeeping can be circumvented through collaborative knowledge management.
Looking Ahead
The writing is on the wall: we are witnessing the deliberate loss of scientific information, the purposeful politicization of fact, and the systematic degradation of scientific expertise and public faith in that expertise.
These dataset decommissionings are part of a coordinated effort to limit access to the very information needed to address our most pressing environmental challenges. When governments actively remove the factual basis for policy discussions, they fundamentally alter the landscape of democratic decision-making.
What remains to be seen is whether scientific institutions, advocacy organizations, and concerned citizens can create alternative knowledge repositories and channels of expertise to preserve this crucial information for future generations. The story of climate policy in 2025 is increasingly becoming a story about the preservation of knowledge itself.
Until next time,
Maria