Potential budget cuts by the Trump administration could roughly slash in half funding for a leading Pacific Northwest climate change research group, scientists say.
The scientists, with the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group, are raising alarm and bracing for the elimination of two federal climate research programs they run from the university campus.
The programs help Northwest communities and ecosystems adapt to climate threats. Their work includes developing a public health air-quality dashboard with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe; drinking-water testing in rural Oregon; and broadly sharing data on climate impacts, including wildfire, extreme heat and sea-level rise.
About $3 million in funding for the group could be at risk annually, according to Jason Vogel, deputy director of the Climate Impacts Group.
A federal Office of Management and Budget document proposes budget cuts that would eliminate a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office that directly funds the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative. Science magazine also reported that the White House is proposing to “wipe out” the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area, which includes the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Both programs are hosted at the Climate Impacts Group. The budget cuts would need congressional approval.
“President Trump’s plans to gut funding for climate adaptation would take a wrecking ball to critical work being done at UW to protect people across our state from extreme heat and wildfires, help Tribes improve climate resilience, and much more,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement. “While Trump pushes for more massive tax breaks for billionaires like himself, he is already illegally holding up funding and wants to zero out critical funding our communities count on.”
Scientists affiliated with the efforts are raising alarm.
This federal funding has supported almost 10 of 23 staff positions at the Climate Impacts Group over the past year, according to the group.
If the funding is pulled, the Climate Impacts Group would continue what work it could with state and other funding sources, but it will in no way match what the two programs do, said Meade Krosby, a senior scientist at the group and the university director for the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center.
“I think you can literally measure the change in federal financing of this in lost lives and lost livelihoods,” said Vogel, co-director of NOAA’s Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative.
The Climate Impacts Group has seen a steady increase in demand for its work — partnering with communities impacted by extreme weather events, climate variability and climate change, when the communities aren’t quite sure what to do about it, or they’re not quite sure what the science means to them, Vogel said.
Climate impacts are arriving in the Northwest.
Hundreds of people have died in extreme heat. Catastrophic fires have swept through Northwest forests and grasslands, destroying neighborhoods and blanketing communities with choking smoke. Rising tides are forcing coastal Indigenous communities to higher ground. Fishers are hoisting up pots of dead crab amid waves of low oxygen and other marine stressors.
Research from the group has helped map the regional impacts and offered potential solutions.
Because the Climate Impacts Group focuses on impacts, it has been, in a way, a nonpartisan alternative to the conversations about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Vogel said. The group is simply there to help communities solve the problems they face.
The Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative has been working with local governments and organizations on how to better safeguard farmworkers and other residents from extreme heat and wildfire smoke. It developed a needs assessment to identify the barriers for tribal nations seeking to adapt to climate change.
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.
The Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, a consortium of nine universities and tribal entities that work with USGS, has served as a primary source of science used by tribal, federal and state resource managers to anticipate and respond to climate impacts on fish, wildlife, water, land and people, said Krosby, a senior scientist at the Climate Impacts Group and the university director for the center.
“If the (centers) are eliminated, then our resource managers are going to be flying blind,” Krosby said, especially in the context of the loss of other federal climate programs.
The center started convening scientists and community members in 2018 to look at changing wildfire risk west of the Cascade crest, and funding additional research to fill information gaps and better protect lives when fire arrives.
The center’s Tribal Climate Tool has been used by tribal nations to identify and prepare for risks like drought and sea-level rise. The center has helped evaluate how effective different adaptation work could be in protecting salmon in warming and dry streams, among other things.
The federally funded program allows scientists to draw from the knowledge of hundreds of experts across its consortium, and that work cannot be replicated without the federal program, Krosby said.
The Climate Impacts Group has survived changing presidential administrations, including those that defunded or reduced funding for climate efforts.
Now, not only is there a reinvigorated political debate around the cause of climate change, which is no new challenge for the group, but also an effort to defund everything that has the label “climate” on it, Vogel said.
“My hope is that … having a sustainable environment that supports life on planet Earth is not a partisan issue,” Vogel said.
