After the Trump administration dismissed nearly 400 scientists who compile the nation’s major quadrennial report on the impacts of climate change in the U.S., two scientific groups announced a plan to publish a special collection focused on the subject to ensure the scientists’ work can be accessed.
The American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest association of earth and space scientists, and the American Meteorological Society, the professional society for atmospheric and related sciences and services, announced they would be inviting climate scientists and researchers to submit their work for what they said would be a “first of its kind” collection.
The groups say their collection isn’t meant to replace the National Climate Assessment, but would complement it, since the dismissal of hundreds of scientists suggests that the next National Climate Assessment may not be as extensive as the previous ones. The Trump administration is legally obligated to produce the assessment, but the White House told CBS News that it’s evaluating the scope of the assessment that it will publish.
The National Climate Assessment is a major publication produced every four years that summarizes the impacts of climate change in the U.S., and it is congressionally mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The sixth edition is scheduled for publication in 2027, and preparations have been underway for months to meet that deadline.
The assessment helps federal, state and local governments and businesses to prepare for the impacts of climate change and adapt to and mitigate challenges arising from climate change.
American Meteorological Society president David Stensrud praised the National Climate Assessment as “a comprehensive, rigorous integration and evaluation of the latest climate science knowledge that decision makers — from government at all levels to private enterprise — need in order to understand the world in which we live.” He said it’s “vital to support and help expand this collaborative scientific effort” to benefit the U.S. and the world.
The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society told CBS News in an email that their new effort will be a “collection of scientific papers from across multiple journals that address a particular topic,” and the focus on the collection will be climate change in the United States.
American Geophysical Union president Brandon Jones said in a 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 two organizations will open the effort to any scientists who want to submit original work or review articles. Authors who were released from writing the sixth National Climate Assessment are being encouraged to participate and submit their work.
The AGU and AMS have not determined when this new collection of climate change research will be published. The groups told CBS News in an email that it’s likely to take months, or even years, to produce the full catalogue of research, since every submission will need to undergo a rigorous peer-review process.
