Effort Begins to Fill Void From Terminated US Climate Report

An initiative is underway to fill the information gap created by the termination of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, a legally mandated report on climate change impacts. In 2017, the Trump administration significantly curtailed efforts on the next assessment by eliminating funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program and removing hundreds of contributing authors. Past reports were also made inaccessible online, prompting external hosting of copies to maintain public access to the data. Responding to this disruption, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) launched a collaborative effort to establish a central repository for climate research. This new initiative, termed the "U.S. Climate Collection," diverges from the structured approach of the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Instead of coordinating a single, comprehensive report, the AGU and AMS are encouraging teams of researchers to publish their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals. These published papers will then be aggregated into a centralized resource, intended to serve as a foundation for future climate assessments. The first contribution to this collection has now been published. This inaugural paper is the product of 149 authors, many of whom were previously involved in the U.S. National Climate Assessment. The research is being published concurrently in two journals: one managed by the American Geophysical Union and another by the American Meteorological Society. This dual publication strategy underscores the paper's objective to provide a comprehensive roadmap for prioritizing future climate research contributions. The U.S. Climate Collection aims to ensure that vital climate science remains accessible and can inform policy and adaptation strategies, even in the absence of a formally produced national assessment. The initiative seeks to foster continued scientific inquiry and dissemination of climate data, supporting researchers and policymakers in understanding and addressing the complexities of climate change at regional and local levels. The AGU, founded in 1932, is a prominent nonprofit organization of Earth and space scientists, while the AMS, established in 1919, is a leading scientific society devoted to the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences. Both organizations play crucial roles in advancing scientific understanding and communication within their respective fields.