Two groups of scientists announced plans on Friday to publish a special collection on climate change to ensure their work is accessible. This comes after the Trump administration fired 400 scientists who prepare the nation’s key quadrennial report on the effects of climate change in the United States.
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 an invitation to climate scientists and researchers to submit their work for this collection. It will be a “first of its kind” collection.
The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a detailed assessment on the effects of climate change in the US. It is mandated by Congress under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The sixth edition is set to be released in 2027, and preparations have been ongoing for months to reach the goal.
The most recent report was published in 2023, when extreme weather caused record costs of more than $1 billion (€900 million).
The evaluation assists federal, state, and local governments, as well as companies, in preparing for the impacts of climate change and adapting to and mitigating the challenges that come with it.
The groups claim that the special collection is not intended to replace the NCA, but rather to support it, as the dismissal of hundreds of scientists signals that the upcoming Assessment will be less comprehensive than past ones. The Trump administration is legally required to submit the evaluation, but the White House has told CBS News that it is determining the scope of the report that will be published.
The AMS president, David Stensrud, praised the NCA 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 stated that it is “vital to support and help expand this collaborative scientific effort” to benefit both the US and the world.
In a statement Brandon Jones, president of the AGU said, “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.”
According to an email sent to CBS News by the two scientific organisations, their new initiative will be a “collection of scientific papers from across multiple journals that address a particular topic,” with climate change in the US as its focus.
The two organisations have invited scientists to submit original work or review articles. Authors who have been released from writing the sixth NCA have been encouraged to participate.
The AGU and AMS have not yet decided when this new collection of climate change research will be published. The groups told the news outlet that it will likely take months, if not years, to complete the full catalogue of research because each contribution must go through a thorough peer-review procedure.