The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society created the U.S. Climate Collection, a research hub, after federal actions disrupted work on the next National Climate Assessment. Its first paper, published in two journals, has 149 authors.
The assessment process is required by federal law. In 2025, the administration cut support for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, dismissed hundreds of contributors to the next assessment and took earlier reports offline, Ars Technica reported. Many of the first paper’s authors had contributed to the canceled U.S. report. The collection is designed to gather separate peer-reviewed studies that can later be compiled for future assessment writers; its first paper maps research priorities and could aid regional or local reports.
National Climate Assessments synthesize thousands of published studies, summarizing what research does and does not establish about climate patterns and their effects. The shared evidence can help city officials plan flood-resistant infrastructure and farmers distinguish long-term climate change from annual weather variability affecting planting and harvests; researchers also use assessments as a common reference.
