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Several climate records broke at once in 2025: warmest ocean heat content on record, record high sea levels, and lowest winter Arctic ice extent since satellite monitoring began in the late 1970s. Regarding surface temperatures, 2025 was the third-warmest year on record according to most major climate monitoring agencies, including NOAA, the European Union’s Copernicus service, and Berkeley Earth, though NASA’s analysis placed it as the second-warmest.
Yet as the agencies released these record-breaking findings this week, something had changed. The data itself remained as rigorous as ever—the temperature measurements, the ocean heat calculations, the ice extent figures all processed through the same careful checking process scientists have developed over decades. But the way that data reached the public had been stripped down, edited, stripped of explanations and background information in ways that reveal how fragile the connection between climate science and policy has become.
NOAA and NASA maintain the monitoring systems that quantify global warming, forecast extreme weather patterns, and provide the evidence-based foundation for policy decisions worth trillions of dollars.
How Two Agencies Split the Work
NASA, established in 1958 primarily to advance space exploration, gradually developed an Earth science division that now operates sophisticated satellites collecting data. NOAA specializes in operational systems that provide real-time forecasts and near-term products that directly inform government decision-making and public safety.
This division shapes what data each agency collects and how it gets used. NOAA maintains parallel temperature monitoring systems through its National Centers for Environmental Information, which operates independently to double-check NASA’s results.
The existence of independent data streams—NOAA calculates temperatures using different methods than NASA, and international agencies like the European Union’s Copernicus service maintains yet another system—provides backup and prevents mistakes in one system from throwing off the whole record. These numbers shape everything from water policy in the Colorado River basin to agricultural planning across the Great Plains to federal disaster preparedness budgets.
NASA operates satellites that take detailed pictures of ice and snow, tracking changes in Arctic sea ice, snow cover, and glacial ice sheets. NOAA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, operated as a partnership between NOAA and the University of Colorado, processes these satellite observations and produces the long-term time series.
Ocean heat content monitoring—one of the most critical indicators of long-term change—relies on NOAA’s network of Argo floats, robot sensors that drift through oceans measuring temperature and salinity, combined with satellite sea surface temperature measurements that NASA helps process. The ninth consecutive year of record global ocean heat content recorded in 2025 could not have been calculated without both agencies’ contributions.
NOAA and NASA coordinate through formal agreements and memoranda of understanding. NASA develops satellite technology and provides research data while NOAA turns NASA’s tested technologies into operational tools that forecasters use every day. NASA might develop an advanced sensor for measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide, test it in research mode for several years, and then—if it works reliably—NOAA might incorporate similar technology into its operational satellites that provide continuous data streams to meteorologists and policymakers.
Several of NOAA’s key satellites, including those measuring sea surface temperature and atmospheric water vapor, are aging beyond their designed lifespans and will require replacement with new systems in the coming years. This transition will depend heavily on technological advances NASA has already tested.
From Satellite to Policy Brief: The Data Pipeline
When NOAA’s Prediction Center releases its monthly El Niño and La Niña forecasts—critical information that affects agricultural planting decisions, water resource management, and disaster preparedness across the nation—the data has already passed through quality checks.
Scientists at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center run computer models that combine ocean and weather data, atmospheric measurements, and historical patterns. Senior scientists then review what the computer models predict to check if the results make sense and match other data, and to spot any obvious errors.
During the 2025 to 2026 transition, the forecast showed La Niña conditions weakening faster than historical norms suggested they would. When the ocean pattern shifts to neutral, the weather patterns shift significantly—the Pacific Northwest becomes drier, the southern United States warmer, while Atlantic hurricane formation patterns shift in ways that affect federal disaster preparedness planning. NOAA’s National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency receive these forecasts and use them to adjust resource allocation and preparation strategies. Agricultural agencies at the federal and state levels incorporate these forecasts into guidance for farmers deciding when to plant, what crops to prioritize, and how to manage irrigation water.
The annual global temperature assessment follows an even more elaborate review process because these figures carry political weight. When scientists at NASA GISS finish processing all of the year’s temperature data, they prepare both a full technical report with uncertainty estimates and explanations of how they calculated the numbers, along with a public-facing press release.
The 2025 release, issued this week under the Trump administration, contained no explanation of what caused the warming. It consisted instead of “six paragraphs” with basic facts and figures, according to reporting by Agence France-Presse. This change did not reflect a change in the underlying science—the temperature measurements themselves remained unchanged—but rather a deliberate choice about what narrative would accompany the data.
The raw measurements are objective, but how those measurements are explained, what context is provided, and what gets emphasized are not. When NOAA and NASA scientists calculate temperature anomalies, those numbers reflect genuine measurement and rigorous methodology. NASA typically reports temperature changes relative to a mid-20th century baseline (1951-1980) rather than pre-industrial temperatures, though other agencies like Berkeley Earth do provide estimates relative to pre-industrial baselines. Whether that warming is presented as primarily a natural phenomenon, primarily a human phenomenon, or explained in terms of tipping points and policy goals depends on decisions made by government officials who may have political reasons separate from scientific truth.
The Trump administration’s direction to NASA to provide data without explaining what caused the warming does not change what the data shows. But it does change how policymakers and the public understand what the data means.
NOAA’s Prediction Center updates its ENSO forecast every two weeks as new ocean observations arrive. The National Weather Service incorporates these forecasts into its 30-day and 90-day outlooks that shape how meteorological offices allocate forecasting resources and how they communicate expectations to the public.
Water resource managers at federal and state agencies receive these forecasts and adjust releases from reservoirs, a particularly critical function in the Western United States where water scarcity affects agriculture, power generation, and urban supplies. The National Interagency Fire Center uses NOAA’s forecasts about weather patterns for the coming months to forecast where wildfire danger will be highest, helping it pre-position firefighting resources. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department receive briefings on forecasts because extreme weather events disrupt supply chains, affect energy prices, and impact inflation.
During fiscal year 2025, NOAA requested approximately $6.3 billion in total funding, with about 20 percent going to monitoring systems. NASA’s annual budget exceeded $25 billion, with the Earth sciences division—responsible for monitoring satellites—consuming roughly $2 billion annually.
A single major hurricane costs $10 billion to $100 billion in damages depending on intensity and location. Errors in water resource forecasts for the Colorado River basin, informed by ENSO predictions, affect millions of acres of agricultural production and millions of people’s municipal water supplies.
What the 2025 Records Mean
Multiple records breaking at the same time in 2025 suggests something more alarming than any single metric alone would indicate. NOAA’s monitoring chief Russ Vose stated that when 2023, 2024, and 2025 are “charted on a graph,” these “seemed to jump up,” breaking with the steadier trend of warming observed over the prior 50 years. This means projections from even a few years ago may have underestimated how fast things are changing.
Global ocean heat content increased for the ninth consecutive year in 2025, with the year’s increase amounting to 23 zettajoules of energy absorbed by the oceans. A zettajoule is about 200 times all the electricity the entire world uses in a year. The oceans absorb approximately 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, making ocean heat content “the single best indicator that the planet is warming,” according to Kevin Trenberth, a scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The absorbed heat will keep warming the planet for centuries, regardless of whether emissions stop immediately. Heat gradually moves down into the deep ocean, a process that takes about 25 years, creating warming that will happen no matter what we do now.
The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter released findings this month concluding that we’ll overshoot the 1.5°C target even if we reach net zero emissions because the planet is more sensitive to greenhouse gas concentrations than previously estimated. Air pollution currently reflects some sunlight back to space, which cools the planet. As we clean up pollution, that cooling effect disappears—approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius of warming in recent decades was masked. As the world reduces pollution sources through regulations on shipping fuel and industrial emissions, that cooling effect will go away, revealing more warming.
Combined with Earth’s elevated sensitivity to greenhouse gases, this suggests that even if we reach net zero emissions, temperatures will go above the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degree Celsius target, likely peaking around 1.7 to 1.9 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels before potentially declining again if we use carbon-removal technology widely enough.
If net zero emissions alone—already an ambitious policy goal that most countries have not yet credibly committed to achieving—will not be sufficient to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, then policymakers need to begin planning for a warming world of 1.7 or 1.8 degrees and simultaneously develop strategies for deploying negative emissions technology at unprecedented scale in the second half of this century.
The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and its scaling back of policies during 2025 suggest that this sophisticated understanding of science policy has not filtered into the highest levels of government.
As sea ice diminishes, it opens shipping routes that were previously blocked by ice, affects military strategy in the Arctic, impacts indigenous communities that depend on sea ice, and creates territorial disputes as nations seek to exploit newly accessible resources. The Arctic is warming twice as fast because ice and snow reflect sunlight back to space. When they melt, that reflective surface disappears.
The Arctic Report Card documented that in 2025 the region experienced record-high precipitation, shorter snow seasons, thinner sea ice that is more vulnerable to warming, and record fire activity on the Arctic’s North Slope. These changes are reshaping ecosystems and human communities in ways that demand policy responses, from coastal infrastructure adaptation to international coordination on shipping route regulations.
ENSO Forecasting and Agricultural Impacts
The transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions represents a shift with direct consequences for American agriculture, water resources, and economic activity. El Niño and La Niña are patterns where the Pacific Ocean gets warmer or cooler in cycles, and these patterns affect weather thousands of miles away.
A weak La Niña since late 2024 has slightly cooled the planet, masking some of the warming from greenhouse gases. As this cooling effect diminishes and conditions transition to ENSO-neutral in the coming months, the underlying warming will become more apparent, likely pushing 2026 toward temperatures similar to or potentially exceeding 2025’s record levels.
During El Niño years, the southern United States becomes warmer and drier, affecting cotton, sorghum, and range cattle production across Texas and Oklahoma. During La Niña years, conditions favor cooler temperatures in the northern plains and increased precipitation in the Pacific Northwest. When neither pattern is happening, weather becomes harder to predict because we lose that organizing influence.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture incorporates NOAA’s ENSO forecasts into its crop forecasting models, which influence grain prices, commodity markets, and export planning. A wrong forecast could cost farmers and agribusiness companies hundreds of millions of dollars if they make planting and purchasing decisions based on weather that doesn’t happen.
NOAA’s forecasts of El Niño and La Niña have been accurate, though not perfect. NOAA’s Prediction Center keeps detailed records of how accurate its forecasts are and has gotten better over time as computer models have become more sophisticated.
The agency publishes not just its forecast but also quantified uncertainty estimates, allowing users—farmers, water managers, utility companies, emergency managers—to make decisions that account for the possibility that the forecast could be wrong.
A forecast indicating 75 percent probability of ENSO-neutral conditions by spring contains meaningful uncertainty: there is a 25 percent chance that conditions will not transition, remaining in La Niña or jumping directly to El Niño. For water managers making billion-dollar decisions about how much water to release from reservoirs, this uncertainty is crucial, yet the agencies that turn ENSO forecasts into water policy don’t always explain that the forecast could be wrong.
Political Interference and Scientific Integrity
The biggest threat to NOAA and NASA working together isn’t technical—it’s politics. During 2025, the Trump administration took numerous actions that compromised the independence of federal science. NASA released its 2025 temperature report without explaining what caused the warming that characterized previous years.
The press release “only runs through a few key facts and figures, and totals six paragraphs,” compared to previous years’ releases that “featured lengthy quotes from the then-NASA chief and a senior scientist and included graphics and a video.”
The Trump administration began shutting down NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which maintains the main temperature record. It proposed cutting almost all research funding at NOAA, including the Prediction Center that forecasts El Niño and La Niña. The administration canceled the lease for NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Hilo, Hawaii, which tracks carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It stopped work on projects designed to forecast heavy rain, which helps communities prepare for flooding. It ended support for important data products at the National Snow and Ice Data Center that track ice and snow.
The administration ordered federal agencies to remove information from their websites and publications. The EPA removed science information from its website. The Department of Energy published a report saying that warming from carbon dioxide is less economically damaging than people think, a conclusion the American Meteorological Society said had five major errors and contradicts what scientists know.
These actions don’t change the fact that warming is happening. The warming continues whether the government talks about it or not. But they do make it harder for government to communicate science to policymakers and the public.
When NOAA’s Prediction Center can’t tell agricultural agencies clearly what El Niño and La Niña will do, or when scientists worry their research might be hidden if the findings are politically inconvenient, the system for turning science into policy advice breaks down.
Water managers deciding how much water to release from Glen Canyon Dam depend on accurate forecasts and outlooks to manage water for millions of people. Emergency managers preparing for hurricanes depend on forecasts of how El Niño will affect storm patterns. Farmers deciding whether to plant winter wheat or summer crops depend on guidance that is both scientifically sound and communicated clearly.
For 20 years, Americans have disagreed about whether humans cause warming and what to do about it, with one side accepting that humans cause warming and another questioning whether the research is right. This disagreement has made science political in ways that other federal research isn’t.
When the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, or the National Science Foundation releases technical findings, these usually don’t become political issues. But when NOAA or NASA releases data, politicians immediately argue about what it means, even when the data itself isn’t controversial.
2025 was one of the three warmest years on record. NASA and NOAA independently calculated this using different methods.
The International Dimension
Monitoring is now global. American agencies are important, but other countries also do it. The World Meteorological Organization, a UN agency, coordinates with weather agencies from nearly every country so they measure and share data in the same way.
The European Union’s Copernicus service operates satellite systems that collect data independently, so if American systems fail, we still have data. Japan operates its own monitoring satellites. China has been investing heavily in Earth observation satellite systems.
This international coordination helped confirm the 2025 temperature records were accurate. When NASA reported that 2025 was among the warmest years on record, the European Union’s Copernicus service independently reached the same conclusion, and Japan’s monitoring also confirmed the overall trend, even though they used different methods and different data. The World Meteorological Organization, working with NASA, NOAA, and the other agencies, calculated that the average global temperature for 2025 was 15.08 degrees Celsius, which is 1.44 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times.
When multiple independent systems all reach the same conclusion, it’s more trustworthy. Yet this international coordination also has risks. If the United States stops cooperating on science or cuts research funding, it loses influence in one of the most important areas of science. The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement signals to other countries that America is no longer committed to working together on science and policy. This decision affects whether other countries will share data with us, coordinate satellites with us, and fund joint research.
What Policymakers Hear
The 2025 records and research showing net zero won’t prevent warming beyond 1.5°C should make policymakers change their goals. Yet politics makes it unlikely that policymakers will change course anytime soon.
The Trump administration has weakened agencies that turn science into advice for policymakers. Cutting research funding, removing experts from committees, and hiding findings all make it harder for the government to respond even as the information shows the problem is getting worse.
The NOAA-NASA coordination system continues to work because the science itself is bigger than any one administration’s politics. NOAA satellites will continue to measure sea surface temperatures, even if the government doesn’t talk about it. NASA instruments will continue to track Arctic ice extent, even if the government doesn’t publicize it. Scientists will continue to process this data carefully, following the same standards they always have.
But the government’s ability to turn these findings into advice for policymakers and explain them clearly has been damaged.
Congress needs to fund new monitoring satellites because the old ones are wearing out. They need to make sure politics doesn’t interfere with NOAA and NASA’s work. They need to pass laws requiring federal agencies to share science without hiding or changing it. They need to make sure policymakers use forecasts when making decisions about water, farming, disaster preparedness, and infrastructure.
If the research is right that net zero won’t prevent warming beyond 1.5°C, then current goals are too weak. This means policymakers need to cut emissions faster, develop technology to pull carbon out of the air, and prepare for a warmer world.
NOAA scientists can predict El Niño and La Niña weeks and months ahead, which gives people time to prepare. Federal agencies and companies use these forecasts to decide how much water to release from dams, what crops to plant, and how to prepare for disasters. Yet even this successful example of science informing policy is threatened by budget cuts and reduced support.
The 2025 records—the warmest ocean heat, the record sea levels, the lowest Arctic winter ice—show what’s happening because of the carbon dioxide we’ve put in the atmosphere. How the government explains these changes and responds will determine policy and whether America can handle warming.
Right now, the system for turning satellite data into policy advice is scientifically sound but politically vulnerable. Scientists know what the data shows. The question is whether anyone in power is paying attention.
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