Scientists Build a Workaround After U.S. Climate-Assessment Process Is Dismantled

After key elements of the federal process that produce the U.S. National Climate Assessment were dismantled by the Trump administration in 2025, major scientific organizations moved quickly to preserve the flow of climate information that communities, researchers and policymakers rely on.

The administration interrupted a congressionally required reporting system by cutting support for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), removing hundreds of contributors from the next National Climate Assessment and taking earlier reports offline, Ars Technica reported. Those changes threatened a well-established process that synthesizes thousands of studies into a single, widely cited basis for planning and research.

To help fill that void, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) launched the U.S. Climate Collection, a research hub designed to mirror the material a national assessment would draw on and to accommodate regional and local reports as well. The Collection’s first paper — co-published in Earth's Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society — lists 149 authors, including many scientists who had been contributing to the canceled U.S. report.

Under this new approach, research teams publish separate peer-reviewed journal studies first. Those papers can later be assembled into a single central resource for future assessment authors, rather than beginning with one large, centrally coordinated report. The intent is to preserve an authoritative, citable evidence base that local planners, state agencies and researchers can use.

Why it matters: National climate assessments do more than present technical findings to specialists. By synthesizing thousands of published studies, they make clear what the research does — and does not — establish about climate patterns and impacts. That synthesis is crucial for local decision-making: city officials consult it when planning flood-resistant infrastructure, and farmers use it to distinguish long-term climate trends from year-to-year weather variability that affects planting and harvests.

Assessments also function as a common reference in the scientific literature, providing a widely cited baseline for future work. When that system is interrupted, the consequences extend beyond Washington to communities that rely on clear, consolidated climate guidance.

AGU and AMS are encouraging research groups to publish peer-reviewed articles that can eventually be compiled into a shared source for report writers. The Collection’s opening paper maps priorities for next steps and can guide both prospective national assessment authors and teams preparing regional or local reports.

If you want to help sustain independent climate information and community resilience, consider supporting organizations that fund climate science, adaptation planning and public education.

Related developments

• Scientists condemned the hundreds of dismissals that gutted work on the next National Climate Assessment.
• Former federal staff and a nonprofit restored Climate.gov after cuts during the Trump-era rollout.
• U.S. forecasters warned after officials scrapped a climate and ocean monitoring network.

Bottom line: The AGU–AMS U.S. Climate Collection is an improvised but credible effort to preserve a trusted scientific synthesis process. By emphasizing peer-reviewed studies that can be assembled later, it aims to keep vital climate guidance available for local planners, farmers, emergency managers and researchers.