TL;DR: On Sept. 22, 2026, 175 volunteer scientists published a roadmap paper in two society journals to start a decentralized U.S. Climate Collection after federal work on the next National Climate Assessment was halted.

Dismissal halted the next federal assessment

According to Ars Technica, the Trump administration last year moved to stop development of the next U.S. National Climate Assessment by removing funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program and dismissing hundreds of contributing authors.

According to NBC News, the halt came in April 2025, when independent scientists volunteering for the sixth assessment were told they were no longer needed. The same account says funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, whose staff organized production of the report, was cut and the program website later went offline.

The assessment at issue is a congressionally mandated summary of climate-change effects in the United States. According to NBC News, the Global Change Research Act of 1990 requires the program to deliver the National Climate Assessment to the president and Congress every four years. The most recent full edition, the fifth assessment, was released in 2023, according to the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment.

Past reports were also taken offline by the administration, requiring other organizations to host copies to keep the information accessible, according to Ars Technica. That removal happened even though the reports are legally required.

NBC News reported that the future of national assessments remained unclear on Sept. 22, 2026. Earlier in 2026, the administration named Matthew Wielicki to direct the U.S. Global Change Research Program. On his personal blog titled “Irrational Fear,” Wielicki has criticized the scientific consensus on climate change and described media coverage linking heat waves to climate change as “hysteria,” according to NBC News. The outlet said Wielicki and the White House Office of Science and Technology did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the special collection or the future of the assessment.

The administration also proposed amending the 2023 assessment to remove discussion of a high-emissions scenario it viewed as unlikely, according to NBC News. Scientists described the proposal as unusual because the 2023 report had involved hundreds of scientists and had already undergone peer review and public comment, with a new edition due relatively soon.

Societies created a central collection

Later in 2025, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society announced a project to give researchers a central venue for the type of work that would have supported the next federal report and possible regional and local reports, according to Ars Technica.

That venue is called the U.S. Climate Collection. According to the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, the collection was created after the federal dismissal of the authors for the sixth assessment in 2025. The Minnesota account describes it as a joint effort of the two scientific societies, intended not as a direct replacement for the national assessment but as a place for synthesis papers and assessment-related research that could inform future national, sub-national and sectoral assessments.

The model differs from the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to Ars Technica, rather than coordinating one large integrated report, the societies invited teams to publish peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals for inclusion in a centralized resource for future report writers.

According to NBC News, the two organizations plan to publish additional studies through the special collection that state and local groups could use to construct their own climate assessments.

First paper sets research priorities

The first contribution to the collection was released Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, according to NBC News. It is a research commentary published in journals operated by the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

According to Ars Technica, the paper was written by 175 authors, many of whom had worked on the federal report. It appeared in both an American Geophysical Union journal and an American Meteorological Society journal because it is meant to guide future contributions.

The two journals are Earth’s Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, according to NBC News. Ars Technica listed the 2026 Bulletin paper under DOI 10.1175/BAMS-D-26-0305.1 and the 2026 Earth’s Future paper under DOI 10.1029/2025EF007336.

The lead organizers were Melissa Kenney of the University of Minnesota, Bob Kopp of Rutgers University and Costa Samaras of Carnegie Mellon University, according to the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. Kenney is director of research at the university’s Institute on the Environment. The Minnesota account says 175 volunteer scholars took part and that work on the paper began more than a year before publication, with teams assigned to topics covering regions, economic sectors and global systems.

The paper does not itself present a new climate assessment. According to the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, it identifies what research has emerged since the 2023 fifth assessment, what work is ready for assessment and what synthesis the scientific community still needs to support climate-informed decisions.

Why assessments matter for decisions

Assessment reports summarize thousands of published studies to describe what evidence supports on a topic and where its limits lie, according to Ars Technica. That function provides non-specialists with an entry point and gives researchers widely cited reference points for further work.

The reports are also intended to support planning and policymaking at multiple levels, according to Ars Technica. Examples include a city designing infrastructure to reduce flooding and a farmer seeking to distinguish longer-term climate trends from short-term weather variability.

The Minnesota account gives similar examples, including a state revising flood maps, a system operator planning electrical-grid investments, a community preparing a hazard-mitigation plan and officials weighing bridge repairs decades ahead. It says such forward-looking choices depend on synthesized findings about precipitation, heat and confidence levels, rather than isolated studies.

According to NBC News, past assessments typically summarized the physics of climate change, its effects on the United States and adaptation activity. They also included localized projections for different U.S. regions to clarify community-level risks.

Roadmap flags models, energy and compounding risks

The roadmap identifies basic assessment topics, including comparison of observed trends with climate-model projections, according to Ars Technica. It also points to recent methodological developments, including machine-learning-based simulations and methods for producing simulations at finer spatial resolution.

According to NBC News, the document calls for greater attention to compounding events, such as a heat wave following a hurricane. Kenney told the outlet that recent months had shown high heat combined with wildfire and extreme precipitation causing flash floods and power outages that strained existing policies and infrastructure.

The paper notes scientific advances since the 2023 assessment in characterizing flood risk, including improved understanding of rapid intensification of hurricanes and subsidence along U.S. coasts, according to NBC News. Kenney said a great deal had progressed in the intervening years and that communities were asking for scientific information about experienced impacts and expected future changes.

Human and economic changes also feature in the agenda. According to Ars Technica, overall U.S. climate policy has been unstable, while adaptation and emissions-reduction activity continues at smaller scales. Renewable energy has continued to become less expensive and more widely deployed, while growth in electricity demand expected from artificial-intelligence data centers has altered U.S. demand outlooks.

Regional focus and work beyond borders

The paper discusses building on the regional approach used in previous National Climate Assessments, according to Ars Technica. Examining a specific part of the country can link physical changes, local impacts and response options more directly.

As an illustration, the paper uses Alaska, noting recent work connecting permafrost thaw and wildfires to the subsequent release of heavy metals such as mercury into surface waters, according to Ars Technica.

Operating outside a federally coordinated assessment could allow analysis to extend beyond U.S. borders, according to Ars Technica. Possibilities include extending examination into Canada or assessing how trade connects the United States to climate effects in other parts of the world.

Kenney described the intent as decentralized synthesis. “I see this roadmap as seeding and accelerating a distributed synthesis effort rather than launching a centrally managed research program,” Kenney told Ars Technica. The Minnesota account says each team was asked to summarize context for its topic and propose three to five research priorities, followed by drafting and peer review.

Kenney also said scientists would continue producing research for communities and states. “Scientists working on climate change are continuing to do the work,” Kenney told NBC News, adding that the goal was to keep needed research available for community and state work and for any future national assessments.

Groups preparing state, local or sectoral assessments will be able to draw on the U.S. Climate Collection while no new high-quality national assessment is available, according to Ars Technica.

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