The Trump administration has ended a climate research program hosted at the University of Washington that helps communities in the Northwest adapt to extreme heat, drought and other threats from climate change.
The UW’s Climate Impacts Group, which relies on federal support and hosts the program, said in a Thursday statement that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ended its grant award for the research in a Monday letter.
The program, called the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative, has developed a plan to reduce illness and save lives in extreme heat in the wake of the 2021 heat dome, has built an air-quality dashboard to mitigate the health impacts of wildfire smoke and has expanded drinking-water testing and filtration in rural Oregon, among other things.
The Climate Impacts Group has hosted the program since 2021 and funding was set to run through August 2026.
NOAA was a specific target in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the second Trump administration. The document called the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.”
“What seems so strange to me,” said Jason Vogel, deputy director of the Climate Impacts Group and co-director of the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative, “is that what initially appeared to be an attack on climate science — that was somewhat predictable, and it’s always been a bit of a political issue — is becoming an attack on vulnerable communities.”
In the Northwest, hundreds of people have died in extreme heat. Communities have been razed in fires or forced to relocate due to rising tides. Fishers are hoisting up pots of dead crab amid waves of low oxygen and other marine stressors.
Scientists from the Climate Impacts Group raised alarm last month about the potential loss of the collaborative and a second federal climate program run from the university campus.
The proposed budget cuts they were concerned about would have needed congressional approval. Instead, the end of the program came in the form of the letter.
The May 5 letter from the acting director of NOAA’s Grants Management Division states the program funding was axed as “part of efforts to streamline and reduce the cost and size of the Federal Government.”
The collaborative has worked alongside coastal tribes as they respond to sea level rise, and supported Idaho farmers facing drought and land-use changes. It developed an assessment to identify the barriers for tribal nations seeking to adapt to climate change, and has been working with local governments and organizations on how to better protect farmworkers and other residents from extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
The collaborative works with governments and organizations that, unlike big cities or counties, might not otherwise have the staff or funding to map out these impacts and potential solutions on their own.
“We don’t measure our progress in terms of scientific papers published. We don’t measure our progress in terms of profit indicators. We are there to make a difference on the ground in communities,” Vogel said. “And that fundamentally comes down to saving lives and saving livelihoods.”
The collaborative represents about 25% of the total work at the UW’s Climate Impacts Group.
