By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Two major U.S. scientific associations on Friday called for submissions for a special compilation of research that would have fed into the National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive report on climate change impacts across the United States that was effectively canceled by the Trump administration.
The American Geophysical Union (AGU), the largest association of Earth and space scientists in the world, and the American Meteorological Society (AMS), called for the research as part of an effort to “sustain the momentum” of the sixth NCA, whose 400 authors and staff were dismissed by the Trump administration last week.
The two organizations said the new collection will not replace the NCA but create a vehicle to enable the work to continue.
“It’s incumbent on us to ensure our communities, our neighbors, our children are all protected and prepared for the mounting risks of climate change,” said AGU President Brandon Jones.
The congressionally-mandated assessment, which had been prepared by several federal agencies and hundreds of contributing scientists, aimed to crystallize the top science on climate change and communicate it to wide audiences.
It aimed to help policymakers and companies working on emissions cuts and ways of adapting to the consequences of a warming world and was mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.
The last NCA was published in 2023, a year that set a record for extreme weather events that cost over $1 billion, with costly floods, fires and storms occurring roughly every three weeks.
President Donald Trump, a Republican who denies the science of climate change, also dismissed the 2018 assessment.
Earlier this year, he withdrew the U.S. from participating in the latest meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is working on its next global report on climate impacts and risks.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici, Editing by Franklin Paul)
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