Dozens of NOAA websites centered on climate change, extreme weather research and drought monitoring information are scheduled to go dark at midnight Saturday because of contract cuts ordered by the Trump administration.

The websites, connected to the agency’s Office of Atmospheric Research, are slated for shutdown because Trump officials terminated NOAA’s cloud usage contract, according to an internal document obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News. Among the sites scheduled to go offline are those that use Amazon, Google and WordPress services, according to a second internal document.

The NOAA websites provide essential information for scientists, industry, universities and governments worldwide. And if they go down, the consequences would be so severe that “100% unrecoverable data loss will occur,” the second memo notes.

The websites set to go dark go far beyond the Trump administration’s attempts to purge information related to climate change or diversity, equity and inclusion from NOAA documents. It’s a crippling of invaluable data that powers NOAA, and their loss will affect weather research and public safety, said Craig McLean, who formerly served as the agency’s top scientist.

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