EXCLUSIVE: NOAA Caught Manipulating Temperature Data to Advance the Global Warming Narrative (INTERVIEW)
Former government climate programmer has proof of extensive data manipulation by the federal weather agency.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has manipulated climate data in many ways over the years. Now, they've even begun manipulating the raw temperature record, publishing what one computer scientist calls “gibberish”—all in the pursuit of advancing the global warming narrative.
Whistleblower Exposes NOAA Fraud
Tony Heller has spent years demonstrating the data manipulations published by NOAA that didn't match the raw temperature data they'd collected from surface weather stations across the United States. Even he was surprised, however, to find NOAA had begun manipulating the raw data they published. In an interview with Restoration News, Heller called the data manipulations "blatant fraud."
"We have to get the word out on this," Heller said. He expressed deep concern over these practices, saying, "I want to spread the word as much as I can, because they're not even hiding it. Something needs to be done."
I used to be able to trust @NOAA RAW USHCN temperature data sets, but it appears they have started tampering with that as well - and now show their "raw" monthly temperatures 3.24F warmer than the measured daily temperatures. #ClimateScam pic.twitter.com/2FG7BMdr7x
— Tony Heller (@TonyClimate) January 17, 2025
He gave a detailed analysis on his blog, Real Climate Science, including graphs to show the severity of the changed data:
NOAA has started tampering with their “RAW” temperature data, increasing all post-2007 temperatures. The graph below shows changes in the “RAW” maximum temperatures made over the past two years.
He presented two graphs for comparison that he generated using NOAA data, the first in February 2024, and the second in January 2025. The temperature change since 2012 is evident:
Images via RealClimateScience.com
Heller has previously pointed out manipulations of temperature trends in reports released by NOAA. But this marks the first time he's noticed that they've manipulated the raw temperature data.
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Heller Is No Climate Denying Crank
Tony Heller has spent years documenting the fraudulent science behind the theory of man-made global warming. He would know—he helped develop software for the federal government that runs many of their climate and weather models.
Restoration News used Heller's observational data, among that of many others, in our comprehensive report on the junk science behind global warming:
Many folks have documented the data manipulations over the years. Few have been as prolific as Tony Heller, a self-proclaimed environmentalist and computer and electrical engineer who used to write climate modeling software for the federal government. Heller’s blog (RealClimateScience.com) exposes the many ways in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has manipulated surface temperature station readings—manipulations so brazen it strains credulity that they’d have the gall to do it.
NOAA has maintained temperature records at over 1,200 traditional surface weather stations for over a century. A large proportion of those have been observed by volunteers over the years. Heller has demonstrated, in painstaking detail, that NOAA has replaced over 40 percent of those observation stations since 1990 with estimated data, instead of replacing the aging equipment or retired staffers who used to collect the data manually. NOAA has also changed the time of day many of the stations record their readings, which further massages the data to produce the results desired to demonstrate warming.
In other words, 40 percent of the data NOAA publishes from weather stations around the country is simply made up.
Heller's meticulous observations showed up in a Senate hearing, in which they entered the congressional record thanks to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). 
The graph above resulted from manipulations to the rolling temperature mean, calculated after NOAA made "adjustments" to the computations based on the raw data they'd collected from surface climate stations over decades.
Now they're not just adjusting their calculations, but the data itself. Heller said he can no longer run his own calculations with any resemblance to reality, because NOAA has changed the data.
This is no small matter. As Restoration News meticulously demonstrated in the report on junk science, climate modeling has replaced observational science as the go-to method of "proving" the hypothesis of man-made global warming. We already knew the climate cultists manipulated the computer models to produce the predetermined desired outcome—the classic "garbage in, garbage out" problem with computer programming. Now we know NOAA has chosen to manipulate the raw data, too, so that the average citizen can't tell what manipulations they've modeled.
This explains Heller's exasperation when he posted on X recently: "The climate story being pushed by government, academia and the press is based on bad science, manipulated data and rewriting of history. It is driven by money stolen from taxpayers and kept alive by censorship and bullying from legacy media."
Trump Vows to Clean Up NOAA
Within a few weeks of Trump taking office, the new administration has taken several actions aimed at reining in NOAA and its role in perpetuating climate change as official government policy.
President Trump has nominated Dr. Neil Jacobs as the administrator of NOAA, a position he filled on an acting basis in Trump's first term. Trump issued executive orders within the first few days of his second term that reversed Biden-era EOs on climate extremism, including federal grants.
These orders led to a review by NOAA to identify grants related to global warming. The New York Times reported, "NOAA staff members were given a list of all ‘active financial assistant awards’ at NOAA and told to identify which of those grants could be 'potentially impacted' by one of Mr. Trump’s orders. One of the directives in question, signed by Mr. Trump the day he took office, is aimed at demolishing federal government programs that address climate change."
CBS News cited anonymous former NOAA officials who said they expect a 50 percent reduction in staff and a 30 percent budget reduction for the agency.
Trump's and Musk's efforts to streamline NOAA come after decades of manipulations designed to arrive at the man-made global warming conclusion, no matter what the data say. John Shewchuk, a retired meteorologist for the U.S. Air Force, reminded his followers on X about a NOAA whistleblower who exposed their data tampering:
#DOGE should also be aware of John Bates, a former NOAA administrator, who revealed that NOAA was tampering with climate data and then losing (trashing) the original evidence. https://t.co/RuLOdioBnZ pic.twitter.com/nSyAnVuLji
— John Shewchuk (@_ClimateCraze) February 19, 2025
Decades of Lying to America
The example of John Bates is only one in an endless series of proven lies and fairy tales told by the climate cult—paid for by massive amounts of taxpayer funding. That taxpayer funding has created huge government agencies dedicated to producing scientific-sounding statistics and slick marketing campaigns to convince voters that the earth will burn up any second because we all drive SUVs.
Tony Heller's continued revelations about data manipulations only further the case that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and whomever else has oversight responsibilities needs to stop ignoring the problem. America deserves a government that serves the people instead of creating payoffs for special interests. We need a massive cleanup at NOAA—just like the rest of the bloated, biased, anti-science federal government.
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