Nearly 400 scientists across the United States were informed Monday afternoon that their services were no longer needed to help write a major report on climate change for the federal government.
The report, known as the National Climate Assessment, is a major publication produced every four years that summarizes the impacts of climate change in the United States, and it is congressionally mandated under the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The sixth edition is scheduled for publication in 2027 and preparations have been underway for months to meet that deadline.
The National Climate Assessment is the basis for which federal, state, and local governments, as well as private companies, can prepare for climate change impacts, understand future projections of climate risk, as well as learn to adapt and mitigate those challenges.
An email sent to participants from the deputy director of services of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a federal office that organizes the publication of the report read, “Thank you for your participation in the 6th National Climate Assessment … we are now releasing all current assessment participants from their roles.”
According to the email, the “scope” of the assessment is being “reevaluated” as the Trump administration looks to comply with the law, something the White House also reaffirmed to CBS News.
But many in the scientific community are concerned about how the report will be written without the subject matter expertise of the hundreds of scientists and researchers, many of whom were non-federal employees voluntarily working on the report in service of the government.
“The Trump administration has dismissed all the scientists from their work on the nation’s most important climate change report,” Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “Refusing to study climate change won’t make it go away – or help us deal with stronger storms, droughts, floods, wildfires and hotter temperatures, or help us stop emitting the pollution that is making it worse.”
The move doesn’t come as a major surprise as Project 2025 outlined a plan to reshape the report and the office that organizes it, the U.S. Global Change Research Program. In Project 2025, a policy roadmap outlined by the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president, authors argued that bureaucratic offices like USGCRP should not have so much control and reports like NCA should include “diverse viewpoints.”
The steps to accomplish this were laid a few weeks ago when many federal employees of the USGCRP were fired, according to a Politico report, and the contract for outside work to publish the NCA was canceled in early April.
When asked how scientists feel about their expertise no longer being needed, most said they expected the news.
“I feel badly for the federal leaders who have put a lot of time into this, but to some extent, I think the writing was on the wall when they dismissed the support staff a few weeks ago,” said Dr. Robert Kopp a climate scientist and professor at Rutgers University, who was also working on the current assessment. “I think now it’s clear, many of the authors would like to see an up-to-date evidence based report.”
How an independent report can be published outside the purview of the federal government remains to be seen. Dr. Kopp says independent fundraising would need to occur to help support the report’s publishing as it requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to organize the efforts of hundreds of volunteer scientists who write the content.
Failing to publish a report of record that stands up to rigorous scientific review of past national assessments is significant, says Dr. Mijin Cha, a climate and environmental justice professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a fellow author on this year’s assessment.
“We’re losing our status as the premiere data and research country,” Dr. Cha said.
Many in the scientific community have begun to talk about how to move forward, but fears remain that the Trump administration will proceed with its own report, assigning authors that represent alternative viewpoints on climate change.
“I’m worried who will do the NCA moving forward and putting something forward that is false,” said Dr. Cha.
Because the Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates the NCA to be written, the Trump administration is legally obligated to abide by the law and has until the end of 2027 to produce the sixth version of the report.
contributed to this report.
