The new report, published in the journals Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was produced by 175 independent climate scientists, including many who had taken part in previous national climate assessments.
The document outlines areas of climate research that the authors think deserve more focus, like the risks of compounding events — when a heat wave follows a hurricane, for example.
“We’ve seen this summer instances of high heat coupled with wildfire. We’ve seen extreme precipitation leading to flash floods and electricity outages, and those risks are commonly overwhelming legacy policies and infrastructures,” Kenney said.
The report also notes areas where scientists have made improvements since the fifth and last National Assessment, released in 2023, such as how to characterize flood risk with a better understanding of hurricane rapid intensification and U.S. coastal subsidence.
“It’s been a couple of years since the last U.S. National Climate Assessment, and a lot has progressed,” Kenney said. “We hear what our communities are saying, and they’re telling us they need scientific information. They need us to continue working so that they can better understand the impacts that they are experiencing and what we expect will happen in the future.”
The future of national climate assessments remains murky.
The Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires the USGCRP to submit a report — the National Climate Assessment — to the president and Congress every four years. It has typically contained a summary of science about the physics of climate change, its effects on the United States and how society is adapting. The assessments also contained localized climate predictions for different regions of the United States, which are meant to give the public a better idea of the risks facing their communities.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration appointed Matthew Wielicki to direct the USGCRP. On his personal blog, titled “Irrational Fear,” Wielicki has criticized the scientific consensus on climate change and has criticized media coverage of heat waves being intensified by climate change as “hysteria.”
Wielicki and the White House Office of Science and Technology did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the special collection, the future of the National Climate Assessment and whether the publication would continue.
The Trump administration has also proposed to edit the content of the National Climate Assessment from 2023 to remove discussion of a high-emissions scenario it considers unlikely. Scientists said it was unusual to propose editing a three-year-old report that was produced by hundreds of scientists and already subjected to peer review and public comment — especially when a new version was due so soon.
“It’s a complete violation of basic scientific best practice,” said Rachel Cleetus, a senior policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program, describing the proposed amendment as “politically motivated” editing. “They’re just advocating coming and proposing to make changes to a report that they were not even authors on.”
It’s not clear what prompted the Trump administration to seek to edit the 2023 climate report. In its public proposal to amend it, the administration said it sought to clarify that federal agencies should not use the high-emissions scenarios to inform planning processes. Wielicki did not respond to questions.
“There’s no requirement for anyone to take any action based on anything in the NCA5. It’s an informational document. It’s intended to help state local governments, corporations and citizens,” said Phil Duffy, the chief scientist at Spark Climate Solutions, who was an adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden administration.
The Trump administration has not said whether or not it would produce a sixth assessment. The congressional mandate would suggest the next report is due in 2027, but previous administrations haven’t always met that obligation.
“There’s precedent for not putting out congressionally mandated national climate assessment,” Duffy said. “We would be up to the ninth national climate assessment if they had been put out every four years.”
Since the authors of the sixth assessment were released from duty, large nonprofit science organizations have been preparing for the report’s absence, which they think will leave an information gap for policymakers.
When it first announced the special collection, AGU president Brandon Jones said it was designed not to replace the National Climate Assessment, but an opportunity for researchers to pursue new research that could underpin future assessments in the U.S.
The consequences of climate change are coming into sharper view.
