Physicist Stephen Volz had been working with colleagues at the U.S.’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for nearly 10 years to produce a new generation of geostationary satellites — instruments that would provide critical observations about atmospheric conditions, climate patterns and weather. But when Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, this long-term project was thrown into disarray. “This administration canceled three of the five instruments on that program,” Volz, the assistant administrator for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, who has been on administrative leave since July 2025, told Mongabay. The cancellations applied to instruments that measured air pollutants, tracked lightning to forecast hurricanes and tornadoes, and monitored ocean color to detect events such as algal blooms, sargassum seaweed surges and salinity changes, according to Volz. “They said, ‘those are all wasted money, they’re climate alarmist, I don’t need air quality, I don’t need ocean color,’” Volz said about the administration’s decision. The axing of this project is just one example of what experts describe as a broad, long-term effort by the Trump administration to weaken NOAA. The long-standing scientific and regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce has historically been responsible for everything from forecasting the weather and monitoring the climate to managing fisheries and protecting marine mammals. The White House did not respond to Mongabay’s request for comment. NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite, which tracks hurricanes and tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean basin, as well as monitor severe weather, atmospheric rivers, wildfires, volcanic eruptions…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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