Four Climate Fellowships Rescinded by NOAA

In January 2018, EOS (a publication of the American Geophysical Union) reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had been forced to reduce the size of its 2017 Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, due to budget cuts. According to the EOS report, program managers had originally anticipated funding eight fellows, consistent with previous years. After making eight offers, the managers were told by NOAA’s Climate Program Office they could only fund four fellows, and thus had to rescind four offers. Three of the four rescinded offers were to women, whereas the other four were to men. As a result, the 2017 class was the only one in the program’s history to be all male, except the first. The 2017 class was also smaller than any other in the program’s history. According to the EOS report, “[a]t least two other postdoctoral fellowship programs in the United States for climate scientists have also been defunded or put on hold, giving young climate scientists fewer options for continuing their careers.”

Update:

The Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship Program has been admitting 8 or more fellows each year since the 2020 class. In President Biden's budget request for FY2022, $6.9 billion is provided to NOAA (a $1.4 billion increase as compared to the 2021 enacted budget). Of this $1.4 billion increase, $800 million is specifically designated to "expand investments in climate research" to bolster our resilience to climate change.