Scientists Are Reviving Climate and Nature Research Efforts in the Wake of Trump Cuts

The first few months of the Trump administration have been marked by deep cuts to funding and staffing for scientific research. Among them: two major government reports that would have offered a pulse check for nature and climate in the country, and how changes could impact people and the economy. 

Now, scientists are resurrecting these efforts—without the government’s help. 

Less than a week after volunteer researchers who were working on the congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment were dismissed from compiling it, the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society pledged to offer a new home for the work. Meanwhile, scientists who were compiling the first-ever government National Nature Assessment have banded together to finish it. 

Similar efforts are happening across the country to fill in the gaps left by federal research rollbacks. But experts say taxpayers are entitled to climate research that can help them make more informed decisions as mounting disasters upend daily life.

A Climate Setback: From intensifying heat waves to supercharging hurricanes, climate change touches every facet of U.S. society. With this in mind, Congress passed a law in 1990 to spur the investigation of climate impacts through a comprehensive research assessment, which was published for the first time a decade later. Since then, the government has published four additional National Climate Assessments, which have helped guide business operations, health policy, disaster planning and more. 

Work was underway on the sixth assessment when scientists volunteering their time to submit research for the NCA got a call at the end of April that their services were no longer needed. The report is scheduled to be released in 2028, and is required by Congress, so it is likely to be published in some form. But many question how you can produce something without any experts to compile it. 

“One might be concerned that the administration will replace it with something much less robust, replacing it potentially with junk science,” Melissa Finucane, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ vice president of science and innovation and an author of the fifth assessment, told Grist. “I absolutely hope that the work that has been done can continue in some way, but we have to have our eyes wide open.”

As scientists reeled from the dismissal, a different effort was forming in its wake. On May 2, two major scientific societies—the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society—announced a new home for scientific research about U.S. climate impacts in the form of a special collection across the organizations’ journals. 

“There’s no question that climate change is happening, and there’s no question that the cascade effects throughout the natural and physical world and into our human existence is here, and it’s going to continue in very adverse ways,” Brandon Jones, the president of the American Geophysical Union, told me. “It’s important to have that high-quality data that has been generated from research and then obviously gone through that very rigorous peer review process that is a part of the scientific method to provide high-quality data for decision-making as it relates to climate resiliency.”

Jones stressed that the collection is not a replacement for the NCA. Rather, it will provide another venue for sharing crucial, vetted climate research that can inform decision-making, early warning systems and more, he said. 

I reached out to the White House to ask why scientists were pulled off the NCA and if the report would still be published. 

“At this time, the scope of the NCA6 is currently being reevaluated in accordance with the Global Change Research Act of 1990. We are now releasing all current assessment participants from their roles,” a White House official said over email. “As plans develop for the assessment, there may be future opportunities to contribute or engage.” 

Filling in the Gaps: In 2022, the Biden administration commissioned by executive order the first-ever National Nature Assessment, a project to take stock of the country’s ecosystems, wildlife and natural resources. The report was also set to outline nature’s benefits to people in the U.S.—and how development, extractive activities and climate change could threaten them. Chapters were focused on things like nature and cultural heritage in the U.S., the economy and security. 

Though different in scope, the project met a similar fate as the NCA at the end of January. According to scientists working on the nature assessment, Trump officials called them to terminate their work on the report—also mostly done on a volunteer basis—just weeks before the first draft was set to be complete. 

“Like thousands of scientists who have landed in the cross hairs of politics since President Trump took office again, my colleagues and I felt the deep pain of this sudden cancellation,” Phillip Levin, the director of the National Nature Assessment, wrote in a recent op-ed for The New York Times. He’s a conservation scientist at the University of Washington, and former senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.  

With the draft so far along, Levin and other researchers scrambled to find support to help take the report over the finish line. They managed to secure enough funding to launch United by Nature, an initiative “to understand how nature shapes our lives, and how we can shape nature’s future,” according to the group’s website. Part of that understanding will come from a new version of the assessment, which will be released in July 2026, Levin wrote in the recent op-ed. 

Other initiatives are happening in the country and around the world to help support research efforts axed by the Trump administration. In March, people held protests in more than 30 cities around the U.S. to oppose cuts to federal research funding and staff, which my colleagues covered in the field. More recently, leaders of the largest Earth science organizations pledged to rally around American researchers with personal and emotional support, and potentially even financial help, as my colleague Bob Berwyn reported this week. 

While such support could buoy canceled research projects, it’s crucial that the government invest in research that helps inform its decisions, particularly as climate change accelerates, AGU’s Jones said. 

“The general public deserves to have the best available products that their taxes are paying for, especially when it comes to their livelihoods or their lives,” he said. “So I see having the highest-quality science information as a key product for communities to be able to figure out how to be resilient in the best way possible in a changing climate.” 

Cover photo:  Grant Teton National Park in Wyoming hosts sprawling alpine vistas, lakes and an abundance of wildlife. Credit: by George Frey via Getty Images