Science Societies Say They'll Step Up After WH Casts Doubt on Climate Report

Two major scientific societies on Friday said they will try to fill the void from the Trump administration's dismissal of scientists writing a federal report on what climate change is doing to the United States.

The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union said they will work together to produce peer-reviewed research documents assessing the current and future national impacts of climate change because a science-based report required by law is suddenly in question under President Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, Trump's Republican administration told about 400 scientists working on the National Climate Assessment that they were no longer needed and that the report was being reevaluated. That report, coming once every four to five years, is required by a 1990 federal law and was due out around 2027. Preliminary budget documents show slashing funding or eliminating offices involved in coordinating that report, scientists and activists said.

“We are filling in a gap in the scientific process,” AGU President Brandon Jones said. “It's more about ensuring that science continues.”

Meteorological society past president Anjuli Bamzi, a retired federal atmospheric scientist who has worked on previous National Climate Assessments, said one of the most important parts of the federal report is that it projects 25 and 100 years into the future.

With the assessment “we're better equipped to deal with the future,” Bamzi said. “We can't be an ostrich and put our head in the sand and let it go.”

Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, also chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, said the two organizations joining to do this report “is a testament to how important it is that the latest science be summarized and available.”

Hayhoe, who was a lead author of reports in 2009, 2018 and 2023, said “people are not aware of how climate change is impacting the decisions that they are making today, whether it’s the size of the storm sewer pipes they’re installing, whether it is the expansion of the flood zone where people are building, whether it is the increases in extreme heat."

They need that knowledge to figure out how to adapt to harms in the future and even the present, Hayhoe said.