Guardian makes legally mandated gold standard report widely available after administration deleted website
The future of the US government’s premier climate crisis report is perilously uncertain after the Trump administration deleted the website that housed the periodic, legally mandated assessments that have been produced by scientists over the past two decades.
Five national climate assessments have been compiled since 2000 by researchers across a dozen US government agencies and outside scientists, providing a gold standard report to city and state officials, as well as the general public, of global heating and its impacts upon human health, agriculture, water supplies, air pollution and other aspects of American life.
But although the assessments are mandated to occur every four years under legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Trump administration has axed the online portal holding the reports, which went dark last week. A contract to support this work has also been torn up and researchers who were working on the next report, due around 2027, have been dismissed.
A copy of the latest assessment, conducted in 2023, can be found deep on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website. The Guardian is replicating the report here in full in a more visible way for the public to access.
