AGU and AMS Add First Paper to US Climate Collection After Federal Assessment Work Shut Down
The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society have added the first paper to the US Climate Collection, a peer-reviewed effort meant to organize research for future US climate reports after the Trump administration terminated National Climate Assessment work.
The administration eliminated funding for the US Global Change Research Program and removed hundreds of contributing authors from the assessment process, Ars Technica reported. It also took past reports offline, prompting others to host copies so the information would remain accessible. The reports are legally required, the report said.
The US Climate Collection, announced by the two scientific groups later in the year, is designed to give researchers a central place to compile work that would have fed into the next US report as well as potential regional and local reports. Its structure differs from the US Global Change Research Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Rather than facilitating the writing of one large, coordinated report, the groups are inviting teams of researchers to publish peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. Those papers will then be added to a centralized resource for future report writers.
The first paper in the collection is the work of 149 authors, many of whom had been working on the US report, according to Ars Technica. It is being published in two journals, one operated by the American Geophysical Union and one by the American Meteorological Society. The paper is intended to provide a roadmap to prioritize future contributions to the collection.
The collection does not replace the legally required federal assessment process described by Ars Technica. Instead, it creates a peer-reviewed pathway for researchers to publish work that can be gathered for future report writers. The first paper’s dual publication in AGU- and AMS-operated journals reflects the two groups’ joint role in the effort.