Trump administration dismisses authors of key climate report

The Trump administration told scientists writing a congressionally mandated climate report that it was “releasing” them from their roles and that the report’s scope was being reevaluated, in an email sent Monday and seen by The Washington Post.

Hundreds of authors contributing to the National Climate Assessment — a report documenting climate change in the United States that has been published every four to five years since 2000 — will pause work on the next report, which was planned for release by 2028. It could be delayed, or written in a way that downplays climate change, or not done at all, climate experts said.

“Not having the NCA is like driving a car with a dirty windshield,” said Chris Field, a professor of environmental studies at Stanford University. And “like driving with a dirty windshield, it is hard to detect risks until they unfold as disasters.”

The email from the Trump administration didn’t outline what would happen to the next NCA report, only saying that “there may be future opportunities to contribute or engage” for participating scientists and experts.

The NCA’s key functions include analyzing environmental changes, projecting what to expect in the next 25 to 100 years and providing localized information for each region of the United States. Users include the U.S. military, emergency responders, farmers, private companies and the U.S. government.

The White House could not be reached for comment.

The move comes after the Trump administration slashed funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which oversees and coordinates the writing and publication of the report. Trump officials canceled a contract with a company that provides most of the staff for the program.

The Post previously reported that the Trump administration’s termination of that contract would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. Global Change Research Program to produce the next NCA, which remains mandated by Congress under the 1990 Global Change Research Act.

Monday’s action — combined with the contract termination — means “there is literally no one” left to do this work, said Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and one of the dismissed scientists. The NCA is a three-year process that requires rigorous research, Cha said.

“Without the staff and many volunteers, this work won’t be done,” she said.

Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who served under the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said she feared that the Trump administration would issue its own report and use that to justify the unraveling of existing climate regulations.

“The power of the National Climate Assessment comes from its credibility — credibility because its authors are recognized experts and because the report is peer-reviewed by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine,” she wrote in an email. A report from Trump officials that doesn’t have “these safeguards” would be “seen as a joke,” she said.

During his first term, Trump attracted suspicion that his administration was trying to suppress publicity for the 2018 National Climate Assessment by releasing it on the day after Thanksgiving.

That assessment, and the most recent NCA released in 2023 under the Biden administration, warned Americans of the increasingly deadly effects of climate change, although U.S. emissions have fallen since peaking in 2007.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, praised the administration for “taking a new look at the NCA reports,” saying that prior assessments advocated moving toward net-zero carbon emissions, which she called “neither desirable nor realistic,” and did not discuss any benefits of fossil fuels.

Field, the Stanford climate scientist, said the administration should continue with the assessment, saying that would be the “smart, cost-effective thing to do.”