Nearly 400 scientists across the United States were told Monday afternoon that their services no longer need help writing major reports Climate change for the federal government.
The report, known as the National Climate Assessment, is the main publication produced Once every four years This summarizes the impacts of climate change in the United States and provides it in Congress under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The sixth edition is scheduled to be published in 2027 and months of preparation have been underway to meet that deadline.
National climate assessments are the basis for federal, state and local governments, as well as private companies to prepare for the impact of climate change, understand future forecasts of climate risks, and learn to adapt and mitigate these challenges.
An email was sent to participants in the U.S. Deputy Director of the Global Change Research Program, whose federal office organized the release of the report, “Thank you for your participation in the Sixth National Climate Assessment…We are now releasing all current assessment participants from its role.”
According to the email, the "scope" of assessment is being "re-evaluated" when the Trump administration wants to comply with the law, and the White House also reiterated CBS News.
However, many in the scientific community are concerned about how to write reports without the subject expertise of hundreds of scientists and researchers, many of whom are reports that non-federal employees volunteer to serve the government.
"The Trump administration has dismissed all scientists' work on the most important climate change report in the United States," Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. "Refusing to study climate change will not go away, or helping us deal with stronger storms, droughts, floods, wildfires and higher temperatures, or helping us stop imposing pollution to make things worse."
This move is not surprising As a project 2025 An outlined plan to reshape the report and organization's offices of the US Global Change Research Program. In the 2025 project, the Heritage Foundation’s policy roadmap outlined by the next Republican president, the author believes that bureaucracies like the USGCRP should not have too much control, while reports such as the NCA should include “various perspectives.”
According to a report from Politico, many USGCRP federal employees were fired a few weeks ago, and the step to achieving that was to cancel many USGCRP federal employees in early April.
When asked about the feeling that scientists are no longer needed for their expertise, most people say they expect the news.
“I feel sad for federal leaders who have spent a lot of time, but to some extent, I think the writing was on the wall when the support staff was fired a few weeks ago,” said Dr. Robert Kopp. “I think it’s obvious now that many authors want to see the latest evidence report.”
It remains to be seen how to publish independent reports outside the authority of the federal government. Dr. KOPP said the independent fundraising campaign needed to help support the release of the report, as it required a lot of time, effort and resources to organize the efforts of hundreds of volunteer scientists who wrote content.
Dr. Mijin Cha, professor of climate and environmental justice at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said it was important that a record report could not be released, which should be subject to a rigorous scientific review of past national assessments.
"We are losing our status as a premiere data and research country," Dr. Cha said.
Many in the scientific community have begun to talk about how to move forward, but are concerned that the Trump administration will continue to conduct its own reports, allocating to authors who represent other perspectives on climate change.
"I'm worried about who will do the NCA forward and come up with something wrong," Dr. Cha said.
Because the Global Change Research Act of 1990 authorized the writing of the NCA, the Trump administration was legally obliged to comply with the law and would not produce the sixth edition of the report until the end of 2027.