NASA Declines to Publish Major Climate Change Report Online, Citing Lack of Legally Binding Obligation
The U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), a comprehensive and peer-reviewed analysis of climate change impacts across the United States, will not be published on NASA's website. This decision has raised concerns about public access, government transparency, and climate awareness.
NASA's stance is based on a lack of legal obligation to host the reports online, despite a prior commitment to do so after the original hosting site, globalchange.gov, was shut down. The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is responsible for overseeing the study and previously published the findings on its own website.
The NCA provides vital insights into the impacts of climate change on various sectors, including public health, agriculture, infrastructure, and more. Its absence from a widely accessed federal platform like NASA’s website limits democratic oversight and obscures critical scientific findings from the public and policymakers.
The move aligns with a broader context of proposed budget cuts to NASA’s science programs and dismissals of climate scientists, raising concerns about the future prioritization and funding of climate research within the agency. In the White House's FY2026 budget proposal for NASA, there is a suggestion to strip the agency of 47% of its science funding, which could potentially halt satellite air pollution studies at NASA.
The decision to withhold the NCA from NASA's website has sparked significant controversy and criticism from scientists, environmental advocates, and the public. Critics argue that this move undermines public access, government transparency, and climate awareness, especially when the NCA is a legally-mandated report that is issued about twice a decade.
Without a centralized, prominent location, the assessments remain difficult to find, weakening public education and engagement on climate risks that are increasing in frequency and severity. The move also raises questions about community resilience, as restricting access to authoritative climate data could hamper preparedness for extreme weather, public health threats, infrastructure planning, and disaster resilience.
As of yet, no other agency has been publicly assigned to host the NCA reports. The official USGCRP website remains down, and the future of the next NCA, scheduled to be published in 2028, is uncertain. The space agency's largest union has expressed concerns about these budget cuts, calling it an attack on NASA. The space agency's science institute located above the 'Seinfeld' diner in NYC has also been shuttered due to budget cuts.
This development comes at a time when hundreds of scientists working on the upcoming NCA report were dismissed by the Trump Administration in April. The implications are profound, reflecting a legalistic stance but potentially limiting transparency, access to science, and climate preparedness in the U.S.
- The NCA reports, a crucial part of environmental-science, have been removed from NASA's website, sparking concerns about policy-and-legislation concerning climate change.
- The absence of the NCA from a public platform like NASA’s website makes it challenging for the general-news media to disseminate critical health and climate-change information to the public and policymakers.
- The lack of NASA hosting the NCA reports is associated with proposed budget cuts to NASA’s science programs and dismissals of climate scientists, indicating potential shifts in the politics surrounding climate-change research.
- The climate-awareness landscape is significantly impacted as the decision to withhold the NCA from NASA's website weakens public education and engagement on the health implications of climate change.
- The relocation of the NCA reports leaves a void in public access to data essential for cultural adaptation strategies, such as community resilience planning and disaster response, in the face of increased climate-change impacts.
