Why Germany is building an ark for US climate data
Fearing the Trump administration might meddle with U.S. climate data, scientists in Germany are preparing to transfer vast troves of that data to repositories in Hamburg.
In Hamburg, Germany, technicians are constructing an extensive storage system to safeguard climate data supplied by the United States. The German Climate Computing Center, or DKRZ, a major repository of climate simulation data, is home to these new racks. Standing five stories tall and lined with gray metal casings, these racks will augment the existing 254 petabytes of data with an additional 5 petabytes.
A petabyte is the storage capacity of approximately 200 million high-resolution images. While the DKRZ's primary role is to provide computing power and storage for German climate science, the new racks will serve a different and critical purpose - storing backup versions of climate simulations from the United States. The US administration's recent actions, including slashing climate research funding, suppressing scientific reports, and removing human-caused warming references from government websites, have prompted German science organizations to create these backups.
The German Research Foundation believes the Trump administration could block European access to data and research findings stored in the US. The German Research Foundation allocated $35 million in a 2025 program to ensure the safe storage of U.S. data from public and open sources. This project, known as CMIP7-ark, is an essential measure to protect US contributions to the seventh IPCC assessment.
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