Before he started livestreaming a presentation on the history of climate research at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies from its New York City lab, David Rind gave viewers a small heads-up.
“If you hear any noise in the background, this place is literally being torn apart with us still in it,” he said.
Researchers were told to vacate the office and transition to remote work after NASA said it had ended the lease, as a result of vast federal cuts in recent months by the Trump administration.
Dr. Rind’s presentation was the first of many in a planned, 100-hour-long livestream featuring hundreds of climate scientists and meteorologists from across the United States. They are protesting cuts to funding for atmospheric science and calling out potential risks to weather forecasts. The livestream started on Wednesday and is scheduled to run continuously through June 1, the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Since January, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to climate and weather research, including firing hundreds of scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, ending federal monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions and dismissing authors of the National Climate Assessment, the United States’ flagship climate report.
“Having reliable weather forecasts and climate projections is something that I think the American public has been able to take for granted for a very long time,” said Margaret Duffy, a climate scientist and an event organizer. “These funding cuts directly affect the research that underlies those forecasts.”
Organizers of The Weather and Climate Livestream said more than 200 scientists based in the United States were participating in the nonpartisan event, in which they were discussing their work and answering questions from viewers, around the clock.
So far, the presentations have covered a wide range of research, including health effects of extreme humidity and heat, how wetlands store carbon and the science of tornadoes. Scientists are speaking in their personal capacities, and not as representatives of their institutions.
Two former directors of the National Weather Service, Joe Friday and Louis Uccellini, were among the scientists who addressed the livestream on its first day. They are also among five former leaders of the National Weather Service who recently signed an open letter warning that staffing cuts to the organization by the Trump administration could endanger lives.
The effects of staffing shortages at the Weather Service are already being felt, Dr. Friday said, noting that several offices are missing senior meteorologists and some have ended overnight shifts or suspended launches of data-gathering weather balloons.
In a panel discussion, former NOAA employees described the chaos surrounding abrupt dismissals and their fears about consequences.
Some said they had been fired without their supervisor’s knowledge and described telling their bosses that they had been terminated. Kayla Besong, a former duty scientist at NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, said she had to inform her supervisor twice that she had lost her job. Ms. Besong had been fired, later rehired, then fired again.
Sabrina Valenti, a former NOAA budget analyst, said she didn’t receive a termination email but instead found out when she was locked out of her email account. She said that later, when she received a printed out copy of a termination email, it listed an incorrect job title.
Tom Di Liberto, who was a public affairs specialist at NOAA when he was fired and previously worked as a meteorologist, said his biggest concern was safety.
“We’re not going to be able to plan for the future,” he said.
On Friday, in Hour 47 of the livestream, Jonah Bloch-Johnson, an assistant professor of earth and climate sciences at Tufts University and an event organizer, said organizers are motivated and inspired by the response the event has been getting.
He said they’ve counted about 100,000 views on YouTube.
“We’re a livestream,” Dr. Bloch-Johnson said, “so we want the stream to become a river to become an ocean. A force that people have to pay some attention to.”
Organizers said their goal was to share with viewers how a history of federal investments in weather and climate research has led to scientific advancements and improved safety, and to explain how ending that funding puts progress at risk. Throughout the livestream, hosts have urged viewers to call their representatives to register their support for funding weather and climate research.
“We all want to do this because we think that these services should exist for the American public,” Dr. Bloch-Johnson said. “People need to be able to understand what’s going to happen in their futures, especially as the world changes.”