Last month, a group of 175 researchers, including eight from the University of Washington, co-authored a commentary published in Earth's Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
The paper provides a roadmap for future climate assessments in the U.S. by synthesizing the science and identifying research priorities based on existing gaps. "U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions" is the first article to appear in a special collection launched by the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
Many of the scientists who co-authored this commentary were invited to contribute to the sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA), slated for early 2028, but were then dismissed in April 2025 after the Trump Administration cancelled funding for the assessment. The fifth NCA was published in 2023.
The federal government is legally required to produce a National Climate Assessment chronicling climate change every four years per the Global Research Change Act of 1990. These assessments track new and evolving risks related to climate change, as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. The national scope is key to ensuring that funding and policies represent a broad range of experiences and concerns.
"International assessments are valuable, but they are not always tailored to the specific regions and issues that are important in the United States. National assessments fill that gap," said Guillaume Mauger, Washington state climatologist and a research scientist in the UW Climate Impacts Group.
The special collection is not intended to replace the NCA but rather compile research for other scientists, policymakers and members of the public to aid in decision making. The commentary kicks off the collection by identifying where research has advanced, and how risks have changed, in the years since the last assessment.
"Our understanding of climate change and its impacts continues to evolve," said Dr. Jeremy Hess, professor of global health, of environmental and occupational health sciences, and of emergency medicine in the UW School of Medicine. "Conducting regular climate assessments allows us to systematically evaluate that new evidence, incorporate it into our understanding of current circumstances, present it to stakeholders, and apply it to near-term decisions in our respective sectors."
UW News asked each of the UW contributors to elaborate on their role in authoring the commentary and how it connects to their research.
Rolf Sonnerup, research scientist, UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies: "I'm an oceanographer with intimate experience in federal research funding mechanisms and with a broad familiarity with ocean warming and CO2 uptake with associated acidification and feedback on marine ecosystems and fisheries. Initially I was appointed to coordinate among federal agencies, academics and policymakers, but that changed dramatically when the Trump administration eliminated NCA6. In the scramble I became more of an author, and an editor of the Ocean section.
"Some of my research at the UW involves ocean model development in collaboration with NOAA. It was a natural fit to contribute to the discussions on 'Simulations of ocean conditions' and on 'Innovations in ocean observation and data science.'"
Marina Alberti, professor of urban and environmental planning "I led the urban team and the section on urban regions. Urban regions are central to climate assessments. They concentrate populations and human activities, contribute substantially to climate change, and shape how impacts propagate across neighborhoods, metropolitan systems, national supply chains, and global markets. They are also critical places to examine where mitigation and adaptation reinforce one another, where they create trade-offs, and how benefits, costs, and risks are distributed across communities.
"Our section argues that future assessments must represent cities as complex dynamic systems. We call for comparative, long-term evaluation of urban mitigation and adaptation strategies. For nature-based solutions, that means testing performance under future climate conditions and assessing multiple functions, life-cycle costs, social and ecological outcomes, and trade-offs rather than simply measuring short-term, project-level benefits."
Mauger: "I contributed to the Northwest section of the paper, based on my expertise in regional climate impacts and adaptation science, specifically around water and flooding. Our synthesis reflects many of the emerging issues I see in my work helping communities, tribes, agencies and others to understand and prepare for the effects of climate change. For example, we highlight new research on the effectiveness of resilience actions - as more communities take action on climate, I am seeing a greater need for research of this kind."
Meade Krosby, principal scientist, UW Climate Impacts Group: "I also contributed to the Northwest section of the paper. My work at UW aims to provide the science, tools and guidance needed by governments and communities as they respond to climate impacts and prepare for those to come. Most of this work is focused on the Northwest, with a heavy emphasis on ecosystems and natural resources. The Northwest section of the paper highlights many of the climate risks and adaptation advances and challenges my partners on the ground face every day."
Hess: "The takeaways from the health section, which I helped draft, are that we need more information on health impacts from extreme weather and compound events, as well as information on the costs of these impacts. We also need more strategies for advancing adaptation in public health and health care systems; we need health care interventions to protect patients at particular risk; we need more information on nature-based solutions; and we need more information to help convey the health benefits of a clean energy transition.
"The recommendations related to interventions and adaptation in the health sector are particularly relevant to my work at the UW, which is focused on climate change health impacts and opportunities for increasing resilience of the public health and health care systems. I research these issues and also provide leadership related to sustainability and climate resilience for UW Medicine."
Kristie Ebi, professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences: "I was an author on the Air Quality chapter that focused on how climate change could alter exposures to poor quality, from pollen to wildfire smoke to indoor and outdoor air quality. One of my areas of research at UW is quantifying the extent to which reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce morbidity and mortality from outdoor air pollution. The evidence is robust that the economic value of the health benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be of the same order of magnitude - if not larger - than the costs of reducing emissions. In other words, reducing greenhouse gas emissions would benefit Americans by decreasing hospitalizations and deaths."
Other UW co-authors include Crystal Raymond, research scientist of environmental and forest sciences and Deputy Director of the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative and Paul Hessburg, affiliate professor of environmental and forest sciences.
