A graphic from the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released in 2023. USGCRP
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The Trump administration is ending funding for the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which produces the National Climate Assessment — the most comprehensive climate report by the federal government.
The assessment — established by Congress in 1990 and released every four years — summarizes the impacts of global heating on the U.S. and plays an important role in national and local decision-making concerning the climate crisis, energy production, agriculture and water and land use.
“There’s really no coming back from this, and it means we are all less informed about climate impacts, and won’t have the most up-to-date information on risks and threats,” said a federal staffer who participated in USGCRP activities, but requested anonymity to protect themselves from retribution, as The Guardian reported. “USGCRP helped me to leverage resources from other agencies for use in my own work. But without these networks, I’m left without a support system and the latest science on climate change.”
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The next USGCRP assessment is due in 2027, but NASA ended its contract with ICF International, the consulting firm that coordinated federal agencies that contributed to the report.
“Climate research as a whole will be hobbled because USGCRP’s interagency working groups are essential coordinating bodies across the entire government, including and beyond the 15 USGCRP member agencies,” said another federal worker who had knowledge of the program and was also granted anonymity, as reported by The Guardian.
The anonymous worker said that, since President Donald Trump’s second term began, monthly USGCRP meetings had been cancelled.
“The USGCRP’s work, including the National Climate Assessment, is congressionally mandated in statute, and the administration should know it can’t be cancelled by fiat. Federal agencies and hundreds of scientists across the nation help to build this invaluable scientific foundation so decision makers, businesses and the public have the information they need to protect people, vital infrastructure, the economy, food production, ecosystems and more,” said Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, co-author of the Fourth National Climate Assessment and a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), in a press release from UCS.
Trump officials also denied scientists from the U.S. permission to attend a United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in February.
“Extreme weather disasters displaced millions of people and caused billions of dollars in damage in 2024 alone,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist with Texas Tech University who was lead author of three National Climate Assessments, as The Guardian reported. “Given the accelerating pace and scale of climate impacts today, a sustained and more comprehensive national climate assessment process is so essential.”
Officials with the Trump administration have contended that the findings of the USGCRP’s assessments constrain the efforts of the administration to scrap the country’s environmental regulations, reported Politico.
The attack on the USGCRP comes as the Trump Environmental Protection Agency has begun a reconsideration of the agency’s climate endangerment finding, which affirmed the scientific conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to human health. The determination is the basis for all greenhouse gas regulations in the U.S.
According to U.S. climate scientist Michael Mann, the dismantling of the USGCRP is an indicator of the Trump administration’s loyalty to one of the biggest donors to his reelection campaign: the fossil fuel industry, as The Guardian reported.
“It is pure villainy,” Mann said. “A crime against the planet – arguably, the most profound of all crimes.”
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