"The embattled agency continues to disseminate crucial updates in a hostile political environment, while scientists warn that cutting climate intelligence is folly at a time of escalating climate extremes."

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, although battered by Trump administration attempts to impose massive staff and budget cuts on the agency, nevertheless continues to publish critical climate information, including some dire drought warnings in the spring outlook published March 20 by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

The outlook calls for continued dry conditions in the Southwest, where global warming is a key driver of a long-term megadrought that is already disrupting water supplies to cities and nationally important agricultural zones.

About 40 percent of the contiguous 48 states are currently in some stage of drought or abnormally dry conditions, and those are expected to persist in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to the March 20 bulletin.

In the past two weeks, water officials in the West warned that, despite near-average snowpack in some parts of the Colorado River’s mountain watershed, the river’s flows are expected to drop below normal, exacerbating tensions between water users in the region. In New Mexico, water experts said the Rio Grande is likely to dry up completely in Albuquerque as early as June. A 2024 study explained how global warming drives a cycle that leads to measured flows in Western rivers and streams being consistently lower than predictions based solely on snowpack measurements."

Bob Berwyn reports for Inside Climate News March 24, 2025. [2]