All
Authors Working on Flagship U.S. Climate Report Are Dismissed
The Trump
administration told researchers it was “releasing” them from their roles. It
puts the future of the assessment, which is required by Congress, in doubt.
By Brad Plumer and Rebecca Dzombak
April 28, 2025
The Trump administration has dismissed the hundreds of
scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship
report on how global warming is affecting the country.
The move puts the future of the report, which is required by
Congress and is known as the National Climate Assessment, into serious
jeopardy, experts said.
Since 2000, the federal government has published a
comprehensive look every few years at how rising temperatures will affect human
health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy
production and other aspects of the U.S. economy. The last climate assessment
came out in 2023 and is used by state and local governments as well as private
companies to help prepare for the effects of heat waves, floods, droughts and
other climate-related calamities.
On Monday, researchers around the country who had begun work
on the sixth national climate assessment, planned for early 2028, received an
email informing them that the scope of the report “is currently being
re-evaluated” and that all contributors were being dismissed.
“We are now releasing all current assessment participants
from their roles,” the email said. “As plans develop for the assessment, there
may be future opportunities to contribute or engage. Thank you for your
service.”
For some of the authors, that appeared to be a fatal blow to
the next report.
“This is as close as it gets to a termination of the
assessment,” said Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who
specializes in climate adaptation and was a co-author on the last climate
assessment. “If you get rid of all the people involved, nothing’s moving
forward.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
The climate assessment is typically compiled by scientists
and expert contributors around the country who volunteer to write the report.
It then goes through several rounds of review by 14 federal agencies, as well
as a public comment period. The entire process is overseen by the Global Change
Research Program, a federal group established by Congress in 1990 that is
supported by NASA.
Under the Trump administration, that process was already
facing serious disruptions. This month, NASA canceled a major contract with ICF
International, a consulting firm that had been supplying most of the technical
support and staffing for the Global Change Research Program, which coordinates
work among hundreds of contributors.
President Trump has frequently dismissed the risks of global
warming. And Russell Vought, the current director of the Office of Management
and Budget, wrote before the election that the next president should “reshape”
the Global Change Research Program, because its scientific reports on climate
change were often used as the basis for environmental lawsuits that constrained
federal government actions.
Mr. Vought has called the government’s largest climate
research unit, a division inside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, a source of “climate alarmism.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, his administration tried, but
failed, to derail the National Climate Assessment. When the 2018 report came
out, concluding that global warming posed an imminent and dire threat, the
administration made it public the day after Thanksgiving in an apparent attempt
to minimize attention.
In February, scientists had submitted a detailed outline of
the next assessment to the White House for an initial review. But that review
has been on hold and the agency comment period has been postponed.
It remains to be seen what happens next with the assessment,
which is still mandated by Congress. Some scientists feared that the
administration might try to write an entirely new report from scratch that
downplays the risks of rising temperatures or contradicts established climate
science.
“There may well be a sixth National Climate Assessment,”
said Meade Krosby, a senior scientist at the University of Washington’s Climate
Impacts Group and a contributor to the assessment. “The question is whether it
is going to reflect credible science and be of real use to our communities as
they prepare for climate change.”
Scientists involved in earlier climate assessments have said
the report is invaluable for understanding how climate change would affect
daily life in the United States.
“It takes that global issue and brings it closer to us,”
Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said this
month. “If I care about food or water or transportation or insurance or my
health, this is what climate change means to me if I live in the Southwest or
the Great Plains. That’s the value.”
Many state and local policymakers, as well as private
businesses, rely on the assessment to understand how climate change is
affecting different regions of the United States and how they can try to adapt.
And while the scientific understanding of climate change and
its effects hasn’t changed drastically since the last assessment in 2023, Dr.
Keenan of Tulane said, there has been a steady progression of research on what
communities can do to prepare for worsening wildfires, higher sea levels and
other problems exacerbated by rising temperatures.
Decision makers forced to refer to the last assessment would
be relying on outdated information on what adaptation and mitigation measures
really work, scientists said.
“We’d be losing the cornerstone report that is supposed to
communicate to the public the risks we face with climate change and how we can
move forward,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at
San Jose State University who was an author on the southwest regional chapter.
“It’s pretty devastating.”
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and
policy efforts to address global warming.
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