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.
