Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news that impacts science and scientists today.
This week, a parade of scientists will spend 50 hours straight speaking about the importance of weather and climate research in the United States.
Now in its second year, the Weather & Climate Livestream will feature hundreds of scientists describing their work and why it matters. Last year’s event, which lasted 100 hours, saw more than 180,000 views and led to 30,000 phone calls to Congress to #SaveAmericasForecasts.
“The first aspect of it is just communicating science,” said Haley Crim, a climate literacy researcher at MIT and the founder of Climateliteracy.earth. “The second half of it is to inspire people to call their representatives in support of funding for climate and weather science, and science more broadly.”
Last year, Crim was an “avid watcher” of the livestream, so she was happy to help when a friend asked her to pitch in for the second iteration. But it’s also more personal this year, as she has since lost her position as a contractor with NOAA.
“It has a whole new meaning now, this year,” she said.
The livestream begins at 4 p.m. ET on Monday, 1 June, ending at 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June. Speakers include meteorologist Jeff Masters and climate scientists Adam Sobel of Columbia University and Kim Cobb of Brown University. AGU President Brandon Jones and president-elect Benjamin Zaitchik will also speak from 2 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 3 June.
Science Under Attack
Since Donald Trump began his second presidential term in 2025, federal science funding has faced extensive cuts, with more proposed. In June 2025, for instance, a budget document proposed eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. In December 2025, the administration announced plans to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science.”
“This is really a full-frontal attack on climate science,” said Andrew Williams, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who is helping to organize the livestream and will speak during it.
He added that even though Congress pushed back against the most drastic cuts proposed last year, leaving key science program budgets mostly intact, many agencies haven’t yet seen the money they’ve been granted in the budget. For instance, according to the organization Grant Witness, 112 grants have been awarded in the NSF Directorate for Geosciences so far this year, compared with 948 in total in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025. The average total number of grants awarded between FY21 and FY24 was 1,418.
Both Crim and Williams said they hope the livestream provides the public with a better understanding of how climate and weather research affects us all, from allowing for timely evacuation warnings to affecting insurance rates. Williams offered the example of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, a federally funded NOAA research lab that would be eliminated under the president’s proposed FY2027 budget.
“It builds the engine of the U.S. weather forecasting model, which is what tells you day to day what the weather is going to be,” he said. “We’ve all been able to take for granted that these things are happening because the U.S. has for decades, for 60 or 70 years, had strong and stable federal funding for weather and climate science.”
—Emily Gardner (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor
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