The Trump administration announced it is cutting nearly $4 million in federal funding for climate change research at Princeton University, saying that the work promoted “exaggerated and implausible climate threats” and increased “climate anxiety” among young Americans.
The cuts to programs that study topics like sea-level rise and coastal flooding were announced Tuesday by the Commerce Department, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the world’s premier climate science agencies. They come after federal agencies including NASA and the Energy Department announced last week that they would pause dozens of research grants at Princeton.
NOAA currently spends roughly $220 million per year funding climate research, but the Trump administration has signaled that it intends to pare back those efforts.
Among the latest cuts was funding for the Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System, a collaboration between NOAA and Princeton that focuses on improving computer models that show how the ocean and atmosphere are changing. One of the program’s meteorologists, Syukuro Manabe, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021 for his work on modeling Earth’s climate and predicting the effects of global warming.
In pulling funding for the program, the Commerce Department said that the collaboration “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” The agency also said it would stop funding the program’s educational initiatives targeted at students in kindergarten through high school students.
The Commerce Department also said it would stop funding a five-year research effort at Princeton to understand how Earth’s water availability would fluctuate as a result of global warming. And the agency said it would pull funding for a different five-year research project aimed at predicting how changes in rainfall patterns and sea-level rise could affect coastal flooding.
“Using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration and such time and resources can be better utilized elsewhere,” the agency said.
It is not clear how the funding cuts would affect the ongoing research. Princeton declined to provide additional comment.
Climate scientists criticized the funding pullback, pointing out that Princeton’s climate modeling researchers were widely known as some of the best in the world.
“Sadly, climate-related risks will not vanish if they are denied,” Valérie Masson-Delmotte, climate scientist at University of Paris-Saclay, wrote in a social media post. “With the deliberate choice to undermine climate science, knowledge production and science-based university programs, people will be less informed, less prepared.”
“The Princeton cuts are a slap in the face to all those who need better seasonal precipitation forecasts,” said Rick Spinrad, the administrator of NOAA during the Biden administration, noting the importance of such forecasts to the agriculture, transportation and energy sectors. He called the moves a “nose-thumbing” to the work of Dr. Manabe on climate models with the team of scientists.
Researchers expect that more cuts could be coming. In February, NOAA staffers were told to review all existing grants for terms that include “climate science,” “climate crisis,” “clean energy,” “environmental quality” and “pollution,” raising fears that those grants are at risk of being canceled.
Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, is currently reviewing all grants, contracts and contract modifications, as well as contract extensions over $100,000, according to three people with knowledge of the policy who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.
