On ice: US government impasse halts climate research and policy
The US government shutdown appears to be drawing to an end. But the stalemate in Congress has seen many of the US’s efforts to understand, measure and mitigate climate change stall, and the effects could stretch out long after politicians and federal staff have gone back to work.
The shutdown’s effect on climate science in the US has been wide ranging. The US Antarctic Program is in caretaker mode. NASA – which shut down on its 55th birthday – is currently operating at three per cent capacity. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), which monitors oceans, the atmosphere and extreme weather, is 55 per cent shut down.
US climate policy has also been paused. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) – which gathers data and enforces regulation to tackle pollution – and Department of Energy are operating at a much reduced capacity.
Suspended research
One of the biggest issues for government scientists affected by the two week shutdown is continuity of measurements.
Some of the datasets scientists are collecting stretch back for decades. Any further budget uncertainty or break in funding could mean gaps in these banks of information.
Richard Jeong, a researcher at the McMurdo station in Antarctica, wrote a petition to Congress to ensure research in Antarctica doesn’t lose its funding. He writes on the campaign website Change.org about the effect that suspending the programme could ruin long term projects:
“The effects this shutdown will be the loss of continuity in projects that have been ongoing since the International Geophysical Year some 50 years ago. Scientific data such as the Long-Term Ecological Research which has been ongoing for 30 years will have a large data gap in at a crucial time in our understanding of climate change. A similar problem would be the abrupt end to 11 years of continuous data on the solar cycle that is used, for example, by the UC Boulder Lidar project. Since solar cycles are 11 years long, missing this last critical bit of data could jeopardize the multi-year investment. Also threatened is our understanding of rapidly changing ecosystems that is being generated by the study of Penguins in the Palmer Peninsula.”
Loss of data on a whole range of climate-related research subjects, from bird migration to plant experiments, will also affect knowledge of how the world is responding to warming, scientists say.
Knock-on effects
The hashtag #shutscience on Twitter yields a wealth of scientists’ stories and concerns, from wasted funds, to the frustration of being unable to communicate with collaborators, to the prospect of waiting out a month without pay.
It’s not just government scientists who are seeing their work disrupted – plenty of other work depends on US research or government grant decisions.
Jonathan Lilly is an oceanographer who has been collecting researchers’ stories to draw attention to the problems associated with the shutdown for climate science. He tells Carbon Brief:
“There’s an outer ring of consequences. Other people depend on the people who are furloughed, and the furloughed people can’t talk. It’s illegal. There is a big traffic jam, especially in international collaboration”.
Not only are research projects on hold, scientists are legally barred from “conducting public business” while the shutdown is in operation, as Wired points out. Scientists we have contacted said they are afraid to lose their jobs if they carry on with work during the shutdown. According to the law, no federal employee is able to work or talk about their work. This has clouded many projects in uncertainty – for the government scientists, their collaborators, and anyone else who might need their data.
Weather impacts
The shutdown might have impacted the US’s ability to react to things like extreme weather events. For example, while the National Weather Service is still producing forecasts, many of the specialists who track how tropical storms evolve are at home, Lilly says in a blog post.
One scientist at a federal oceanographic laboratory monitoring weather conditions in the Gulf of Mexico contacted Lilly to express his concern that if an extreme event like a hurricane should arise, the weather service may not be able to count on data from satellite measurements. Lilly tells Carbon Brief:
“The people behind the scenes who have helped to build the understanding, many of them are not essential. And some of the crucial data streams going into the severe weather prediction models, these are coming from satellites, and the data streams are not being monitored. You need to have experienced people looking at the data and catching any potential problems, which they do on a day-to-day basis.”
Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society, wrote yesterday that the shutdown is also harming attempts at outreach. Since half of NOAA’s employees have been sent home, the agency’s WeatherReady Nation programme, which is designed to help people prepare for extreme events like last year’s Superstorm Sandy, has been shuttered. Shepherd points out that while science outreach might not seem essential, knowing what to do to prepare for events like hurricanes can save lives.
Policy
The shutdown of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also means that the government’s plans to use regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are on hold.
Around 94 per cent of the EPA’s employees have been on leave of absence since the shutdown was announced, save emergency staff who deal with risks such as chemical spills. The suspension of operations could set back the agency’s work to limit carbon emissions from power plants and cars, the Guardian writes. It was set to bring in new rules on biofuels and tougher punishments for polluters, but the shutdown is delaying such measures.
Meanwhile, only 30 per cent of the employees at the Department of Energy, which conducts research and manages energy efficiency programmes, are at work.
Antarctica
One thing that seems to have scientists most worried when it comes to climate science is the prospect of losing a season’s worth of data from the Antarctic. One scientist tells us: “Antarctic research is completely devastated”.
The US National Science Foundation announced last week its three Antarctic research bases will go into ‘caretaker mode’, with all but a skeleton staff staying on. The worry has been that researchers might miss all of the Antarctic summer research season – the three-month window scientists must cram most of their research efforts into. Researchers have also faced the prospect of being sent home.
While other countries have their own well respected operations on the continent, the loss of specific data risks disrupting an interdependent web of climate research that has built up in the region. As Lilly points out, for example, seal pups won’t be tagged this year, meaning information crucial to understanding the health of the Antarctic ecosystem will be lost. Shipments of instruments over to Antarctica to measure the ice sheet are in limbo.
Lilly quotes scientific diver, Henry Kaiser:
“There are essential climate studies, essential ocean studies going on down there. These are multi-year studies, so if you lose a year, that’s it, the study could be over.”
The shutdown may only last a few more hours or days, but its consequences for climate science and policy could stretch much further into the future.