What We Know About the New US Climate Collection Effort

The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society have opened a peer-reviewed "US Climate Collection" to fill the gap left when the Trump administration cut funding for the US Global Change Research Program and removed hundreds of contributing authors from the next National Climate Assessment, according to Ars Technica. The first paper in that collection, a roadmap for future research, has now been published.

What happened to the National Climate Assessment?

Last year the administration eliminated funding for the US Global Change Research Program and removed hundreds of contributing authors from work on the next assessment, Ars Technica reports. Past reports were also taken offline, forcing outside groups to host copies so the public could still access them. The outlet notes the assessments are legally required despite the funding cut.

What is the US Climate Collection?

Announced later in the year by the AGU and AMS, the collection is not a single coordinated government report like the National Climate Assessment or the International Panel on Climate Change's work. Instead, the two scientific societies are inviting research teams to publish peer-reviewed papers in their own journals, which are then added to a shared resource that future report writers can draw on, according to the outlet.

What does the first paper cover?

The inaugural entry is a roadmap written by 175 authors, many of whom had previously worked on the shelved federal report, Ars Technica reports. It is being published simultaneously in a journal run by the AGU and one run by the AMS, a dual placement intended to give the paper visibility as a guide for prioritizing future contributions. The roadmap flags basic assessment tasks, such as comparing measured climate trends against model projections, alongside newer research areas including machine-learning-based climate simulations, the outlet reports.

First paper added to community collection is a roadmap for research.

Why do assessment reports matter for policymaking?

Assessment reports like the National Climate Assessment and the IPCC's work serve two main functions, according to Ars Technica: they summarize thousands of published papers into findings non-scientists can use, and they give researchers citable reference points for further work. City planners assessing flood infrastructure and farmers trying to separate climate trends from normal weather variability are among the audiences the outlet says rely on these reports directly.

How will the collection produce future assessments?

By building a library of peer-reviewed papers rather than commissioning one centralized document, the AGU and AMS effort shifts the assembly work to whoever eventually writes regional, local, or national reports, per Ars Technica. The roadmap paper's function is to tell other research teams where the gaps are — including areas that have advanced since the last federal assessment — so contributions get prioritized rather than duplicated. The outlet did not report a timeline for when a full replacement assessment might be compiled from the collection.

For now, the roadmap stands as the collection's only entry, with the AGU and AMS journals expected to add further peer-reviewed papers as research teams complete them, according to the original report.