A casualty of the Trump administration’s purge of NOAA employees: media briefings where scientists discussed climate change and weather events.
In an online notice from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and confirmed Friday by spokesperson John Bateman, NOAA says it will end the monthly briefings because it “is no longer able to support the same level of communications around its monthly temperature and precipitation reports, data and associated products.”
The agency says it “will continue to publish the underlying monthly data and provide a high-level summary on its website according to its previously published schedule.”
Former NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad criticized the move, calling it “one of the immediate impacts of this administration’s random and ill-informed decisions.” It has, he added, a “direct impact on critical sectors such as agriculture and energy, affecting every person in the country.”
