Iced out? Research on the Great Lakes goes ahead amid funding chaos.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

The chaos surrounding the future of scientific research in the Trump administration’s first weeks has meant a bumpy beginning for a new program where ice fishing anglers and others on the frozen Great Lakes record ice thickness for research.  

The Great Lakes — which include lakes Michigan, Erie, Superior, Huron and Ontario — comprise about a fifth of the planet’s fresh surface water. Ice cover on the lakes can be measured by satellites, but ice thickness is difficult to estimate from the air. 

To that end, the nonprofit Great Lakes Observing System, or GLOS, is asking ice fishing anglers and others who go out on the ice to gather and submit measurements of thickness, as well as observations of snow cover and other conditions. 

The idea is to use that data to help inform existing ice modeling and expand upon work already being done by federal agencies, according to Shelby Brunner, a science and observation manager with GLOS who helped launch the project in December.

Such efforts matter, Brunner said, because ice forecasts are used for practical purposes such as scheduling commercial shipping and planning activities like fishing and snowmobiling. 

“Ice thickness is important for safety, as we know. It’s important for maritime economy, for the icebreakers, for rescue efforts, and there’s not really a good way to determine it currently,” she said.

And for now, GLOS’s work is moving forward, despite a constantly shifting state of affairs, including Trump’s now-rescinded memo freezing federal spending in late January. 

“GLOS was temporarily unable to access funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which directly affected our ability to meet payroll obligations and fulfill contracts with subcontractors and service providers,” read a statement from the organization. Although funding was restored within 24 hours, “A loss of funding or uncertainty in financial stability threatens not only our operations but also the broader network of scientists, policymakers, and industries that rely on our services, including the National Weather Service.”

Federal agencies have been grappling with a rapidly changing landscape. For one, Trump paused wide swaths of federal spending already appropriated by Congress, including money allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act — in a move some experts say violates the Constitution.

Some Democrats and former officials worry that the administration will downsize or dismantle NOAA. The conservative governing blueprint Project 2025 laid out a plan to break up and privatize the agency. Late last month the New York Times reported that some of its programs were among the thousands under scrutiny by the Trump administration. Compounding their concerns, Elon Musk, as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, has reportedly threatened huge funding and staffing cuts. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Commerce, under which NOAA is housed, has said he does not plan to move or disband the agency.

Environmental nonprofits have said cutting resources to NOAA could endanger critical public services, from weather forecasting to fisheries management. 

“Every person in the United States relies on NOAA data and agency experts in their daily life whether they realize it or not,” said Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability, in a post by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Daily weather forecasts, farming outlooks, coastal flooding projections, wildfire alerts, and hurricane tracking are all dependent on the best available NOAA data. Unsurprisingly, no other U.S. agency has the mandate, tools or scientists at the ready to do the work NOAA routinely performs and provides for free for the public good.”

The White House did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Great Lakes Observing System, which isn’t part of NOAA but receives some funding from it, is moving ahead with the community ice data gathering program and other efforts. 

The nonprofit was awarded $5 million dollars for this and other projects through the IRA, to be spent as needed over the next five years — part of a $101.5 million chunk of funding to “support NOAA’s efforts to provide coastal climate resilience services,” according to the administration’s news release. 

As of February 6, GLOS was still able to access that money, Brunner said, which they also plan to use to develop a coastal safety app and expand access to their website, Seagull, which aggregates real-time buoy and subsurface information and is used by commercial and recreational fisheries, freighter captains, the Weather Service, beachgoers, and more. 

Dan Titze, a physical scientist with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab in Michigan, says adding to their scant information about ice thickness is critical — “almost as important as how much of the area it covers, because that’s how much ice there is on the lake.” They have short-term forecasts, but it’s hard to calibrate those models without more on-the-ground data. 

The idea for a community data program came after regional ice modelers told Brunner they wanted more information about ice thickness across the region and she thought of her dad, an ice fisherman who usually goes out around the region called the Thumb, on the eastern edge of Michigan. People like him, she reflected, are already on the ice, using the right tools and sharing their observations with others.

“We don’t have to buy them augers. They drill the hole in the ice, they estimate thickness, and then they tell people,” she said. “Everyone’s heard a fishing story in their lives.”

Great Lakes ice coverage varies greatly from year to year, but trends show it declining since record-keeping started in the early 1970s. And a warming climate lends additional urgency to such efforts.

“That will tell us how well we’re doing at predicting the ice,” Brunner said. “And there’s been so many variable winters over the past couple of winters we’ve had, you know, it hasn’t been a steady state or predictable in any way. So we’re trying to make sure we capture what’s there.”

There are limitations to this project. For instance, only certain parts of the Great Lakes freeze enough to ice fish on. Another concern Brunner has heard is about the quality of the data, since they are relying on members of the public to collect it. But she said even an estimate of ice thickness will help, especially when gathered by people who have been going out on the ice for years.

And they’re being deliberate in how they move forward; the data won’t be released to the public at first, instead informing existing ice modeling efforts through spot-checks and helping modelers better determine how well their tools are working to predict when the ice melts and other events.

The Great Lakes region is politically diverse, Brunner said, and despite the turbulent environment, she said she hopes members of Congress will see that such research doesn’t follow party lines.

“It’s broad Great Lakes observations and making sure that information is fit for purpose, for the people who need to make decisions, whether it be water treatment plant managers or the Coast Guard or Weather Service when they’re predicting waves or telling a ship it’s safe to pass across Lake Superior,” she said. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Iced out? Research on the Great Lakes goes ahead amid funding chaos. on Feb 10, 2025.