This story was originally published by Yale E360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
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story → publish → collaboration
In a modern five-story building in the center of Hamburg, Germany, technicians are preparing to install several new “racks”—gray metal casings that hold computing hardware—alongside the scores that already line the narrow, dimly lit corridors of the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), one of the world’s largest repositories for climate simulation data.
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that → prepare → data
The new equipment will add about 5 petabytes of storage capacity to the 254 petabytes of data already stored here.
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equipment → add → data
One petabyte is equivalent to the storage space needed for roughly 200 million high-resolution images.
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petabyte → need → images
Under normal circumstances, the DKRZ’s mission is to provide computing power and storage to the German climate science community.
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mission → provide → community
But these new racks will serve a different and highly sensitive purpose: They will store backup versions of climate simulations from the other side of the Atlantic.
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They → serve → Atlantic
The operation aims to ensure that essential work performed by US scientists for the next major U.N. climate assessment, due in 2029, cannot be meddled with or compromised by the administration of President Trump, which has slashed funding for climate research, buried scientific reports, removed references to human-caused warming from dozens of government websites, and sought to prevent satellites from collecting key climate data.
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which → aim → data
Leaders of German science organizations publicly cite these actions as their primary motivation for creating backups.
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Leaders → cite → backups
The German Research Foundation, the country’s main science funding body, believes that the Trump administration could block European access to data and research findings stored in the US.
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administration → believe → US
“The deletion of data has also become a possibility,” says the foundation’s program manager, Kathrin Winkler, “and there is a risk that [data] could be manipulated to skew findings in a desired direction.
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data → become → direction
Trust in US science policy has fallen to a low point in Europe, and fears of losing scientific data are mounting.
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fears → fall → data
The US government quit both the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in January, though US researchers are still contributing to global climate science.
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researchers → quit → science
To support them, the German Research Foundation in late 2025 set up a program, with a budget of $35 million, to provide a safe haven for permanently storing copies of US data from public and open sources.
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Foundation → support → sources
Data collections form the foundation of all empirical science.
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collections → form → science
Climate, environmental, and biodiversity research relies on countless historical and contemporary datasets.
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research → rely → datasets
Some of these collections, such as the iconic time series of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations made at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, have been ongoing for decades and are critical for tracking environmental change.
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Some → make → change
(In 2025, the Trump administration tried to defund and close the observatory, but later Congress rejected its proposed cuts.
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Congress → try → cuts
While detailed datasets are essential for research, it is not standard procedure to back them up in alternate locations.
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it → back → locations
Most scientific datasets are physically stored on hard drives or magnetic tapes at the universities or institutions where they are generated.
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they → store → universities
One simple reason for this is that, until recently, the world seemed safe enough that scientists saw no need for offsite backups.
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scientists → seem → backups
Another reason is that transferring and storing such large amounts of information is complicated.
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transferring → transfer → information
Sending petabytes of data through the internet takes months, and renting faster fiber optic cables can be extremely costly.
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renting → send → cables
Often, the most cost-effective way to transfer large volumes of data is to put them on hard drives or far cheaper magnetic tapes and send them through the “sneakernet,” which means they are physically transported by car, plane, or ship.
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they → transfer → car
Still, the process is expensive and arduous, so most datasets have been kept in just one place.
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datasets → keep → place
But in a world where political upheaval, cyberattacks, and armed conflicts are becoming more frequent, this practice is increasingly considered to be precarious.
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practice → become → world
“If data is stored at only one site, there is a much greater risk of loss from events such as extreme weather or infrastructure failure,” says Eleanor O’Rourke, the UK-based director of the International Project Office of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, which coordinates global climate models for the IPCC’s assessments.
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which → store → assessments
Climate simulations for the IPCC are now considered so critical that overseas repositories are thought necessary for all contributions.
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repositories → consider → contributions
Until recently, the idea that the US science community would have to track or rescue lost datasets was unthinkable.
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community → track → datasets
After all, environmental data generated or funded by US government agencies was paid for by taxpayers and generally remains in the public domain.
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data → generate → domain
Yet these datasets exist in physical forms at specific locations and require dedicated experts to maintain them, which makes them vulnerable to human interference, as well as natural disasters, technical problems like short circuits or battery explosions, and neglect.
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them → exist → circuits
“The data repositories, digital asset management services, and preservation systems that ensure research data remains open and accessible are often overlooked—until they disappear,” data experts Jennifer Gibson and Kaitlin Thaney warned recently.
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experts → ensure → ?
One example of political interference is the recent threat to 300 federally funded datasets carefully built up over decades by NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center.
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example → fund → Center
Alex de Sherbinin, the former SEDAC manager, said the center was founded to “serve as a bridge between the Earth and social-science research communities,” integrating remote sensing data with information on human population, poverty, and infrastructure.
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center → say → population
In early April 2025, de Sherbinin was shocked to discover that SEDAC’s datasets had been completely removed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.
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datasets → shock → team
It took immense efforts by various institutions, quickly scraping datasets from active servers while they were still operational, to secure the information and transfer it to a new host: the Harvard Dataverse Repository.
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they → take → host
Assumptions that US government agencies will store scientific data long-term “are proving tenuous at best, given the anti-science predisposition of the current administration,” de Sherbinin says.
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Sherbinin → store → administration
Numerous similar projects aim to relocate or duplicate datasets within the United States.
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projects → aim → States
Several research institutions around the world, including a multidisciplinary scientific research center in Croatia and an institute for industrial engineering in Germany, have in recent years been the target of elaborate hacking operations, in which intruders block access to files and demand money to restore them.
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intruders → include → them
Victims of cybercrimes rarely disclose publicly which files were targeted, but it’s clear that such attacks can affect scientific data collections.
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attacks → disclose → collections
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine have not only caused mass civilian death and suffering but also immense damage to the country’s science.
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attacks → cause → science
…and 28 more, not listed.
The Aporia
