News - Middle East: European governments are working to break their reliance on critical US scientific data and ramp up their own data collection systems to monitor climate change amid ongoing cuts to American climate research funding.

Since the start of his tenure as US president in January, Donald Trump has initiated sweeping budget cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control, and other agencies.

He has dismantled programs conducting climate, weather, geospatial, and health research, and taken some public databases offline.

Trump has previously expressed his view on climate change research and policy, calling it "fake Green New Scam science.”

"Under President Trump’s leadership, the US is funding real science again,” his Office of Management and Budget said.

European leaders have expressed increasing concern regarding the matter, saying governments and businesses in Europe will be unable to plan for extreme weather events and long-term infrastructure investment, according to Reuters interviews.

"The current situation is much worse than we could have expected," Sweden's State Secretary for Education and Research Maria Nilsson said. "My reaction is, quite frankly, shock."

The Danish Meteorological Institute described the US government data as "absolutely vital"—and said it relied on several datasets to measure, including sea ice in the Arctic and sea surface temperatures. "This isn’t just a technical issue, reliable data underpins extreme weather warnings, climate projections, protecting communities and ultimately saves lives," said Adrian Lema, director of the DMI's National Center for Climate Research.

The new situation has forced more than a dozen European countries to urge the EU Commission to move fast to recruit American scientists who lose their jobs due to those cuts.

Officials from seven countries, including Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden, are discussing joint efforts to safeguard key health and climate data and research programs.

According to a senior European Commission official, the EU is expanding its access to ocean observation data that are seen as critical to the shipping and energy industries as well as early storm warning systems.

The European official also said that over the next two years, the EU plans to expand its own European Marine Observation and Data Network, which collects and hosts data on shipping routes, seabed habitats, marine litter, and other concerns.

The move by Europe is aimed at "mirroring and possibly replacing US-based services," the official said.

The US currently funds 57% of Argo, a core component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), which uses ocean floats to track global warming, sea-level rise, and extreme weather. The EU funds 23% and is now considering expanding its role to safeguard critical data access.

Argo’s data supports a wide range of industries - from insurance and coastal planning to shipping, offshore drilling, and marine tourism. NOAA once called it the “crown jewel” of ocean science. But with NOAA’s future uncertain, the EU is preparing to reduce its dependence on US systems and increase its leadership in global ocean monitoring.

The White House’s 2026 budget proposes slashing NOAA’s budget by $1.8 billion (27%) and cutting nearly 2,000 staff. It also plans to eliminate NOAA’s main research arm, which oversees Argo, satellite sensors, and coastal networks.

Since April, NOAA has already begun decommissioning 20 marine and earthquake-related datasets.

Norway has allocated $2 million to back up US data. Denmark also made a move by downloading historical US climate records in February and is preparing to shift to alternative sources. Germany has commissioned reviews of its scientific reliance on US datasets.

These concerns have triggered a wave of what scientists call “guerrilla archiving.” They are racing to preserve US data they fear could disappear.

The German archive PANGAEA has received urgent requests from US researchers to store threatened datasets. Publicly available US data is legal to copy, but archiving and maintaining it requires significant infrastructure.

Experts warn that without regular updates, the significance of stored data will decline.

Denice Ross, former US Chief Data Officer, noted that only governments have the capacity to maintain such datasets over time. Efforts are now underway among European officials, US nonprofits, and philanthropies to prioritize which data should be saved.

This marks a major shift from decades of US dominance in climate and ocean science. European scientists recognize the US as a trailblazer but also as a single point of failure.

Source: Press TV