Two Scientific Groups Say They’ll Keep Working on U.S. Climate Assessment

The Trump administration last week dismissed the nearly 400 authors of the nation’s flagship climate report, saying in an email that the scope of the report was being reviewed. The move threw the future of the report, known as the National Climate Assessment, into limbo.

On Friday, two major U.S. scientific organizations, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, announced a plan to publish the authors’ work as originally planned.

“It’s incumbent on us to ensure our communities, our neighbors, our children are all protected and prepared for the mounting risks of climate change,” Brandon Jones, the president of the union and a program director with the National Science Foundation, said in the statement. “This collaboration provides a critical pathway for a wide range of researchers to come together and provide the science needed to support the global enterprise pursuing solutions to climate change. ”

The National Climate Assessment is a comprehensive review of the latest climate science that gauges how climate change is affecting the country and what can be done to adapt and mitigate its effects. There have been five published since 2000. The sixth edition was scheduled to be published in early 2028.

The new effort would not replace the federal report, which is Congressionally mandated, the statement from the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When the authors of the National Climate Assessment, known as NCA6, were dismissed, the email they received said that “the scope of the report is currently being re-evaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990.” That legislation created the U.S. Global Change Research Program, where the administration cut staff and funds in April.

It is not clear whether the administration will proceed with the assessment in a revised form, try to circumvent Congress and cancel it entirely, or pursue another path.

“This effort cannot replace NCA6, which undergoes thorough public and governmental review,” said Jason West, an environmental scientist at the University of North Carolina who led the air quality chapter in the previous assessment. “Nonetheless, it gives author teams that had already begun working an opportunity to complete and publish their work.”

Authors on the report had been working for about a year planning their chapters, which covered topics including updating climate models and urban adaptations to heat.

Scientists highlighted that the National Climate Assessment is unique in its breadth, depth and rigor, and that the government’s role in publication has in the past provided weight and credibility to the report.

Having their volunteer roles suddenly and summarily canceled was disheartening, scientists said. For some, the announcement from the scientific societies was a welcome sign that their work could continue, similar to how authors of the inaugural National Nature Assessment pressed on to publish their work.

“The AGU/AMS effort can support momentum on climate science after recent setbacks,” said Costa Samaras, a civil engineer at Carnegie Mellon University who would have led the climate mitigation chapter, in an email. It’s “a reminder that science is unstoppable.”