Effort begins to fill the void left by terminated US climate report

各界努力填补美国气候报告被叫停后的空白

Last year, the Trump administration did what it could to shut down work on the next US National Climate Assessment, eliminating funding for the US Global Change Research Program and booting hundreds of contributing authors. The administration even took past reports offline, forcing others to host copies so the information would still be accessible. And this all comes despite the fact that these reports are legally required.

去年，特朗普政府竭尽全力叫停了下一份《美国国家气候评估报告》的编制工作，不仅取消了“美国全球变化研究计划”的资金，还解雇了数百名撰稿作者。政府甚至将过往的报告从官网撤下，迫使其他机构不得不备份这些资料，以确保信息依然可查。而这一切发生的前提是，这些报告在法律上是强制要求的。

Later in the year, the American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society announced an effort to give researchers a central place to compile the kind of work that would have fed the next US report, as well as potential regional and local reports. This “US Climate Collection” works differently from the US Global Change Research Program or the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Rather than facilitating the writing of a giant, coordinated report, the groups are inviting teams of researchers to publish peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, which will then be added to a centralized resource for future report-writers.

去年晚些时候，美国地球物理联合会和美国气象学会宣布了一项计划，旨在为研究人员提供一个中心平台，以汇编那些本应进入下一份美国报告的内容，以及潜在的区域和地方性报告。这个“美国气候合集”（US Climate Collection）的运作方式与“美国全球变化研究计划”或“政府间气候变化专门委员会”（IPCC）不同。这些组织不再推动撰写一份庞大且统一的报告，而是邀请研究团队在科学期刊上发表同行评审论文，随后将这些论文汇集到一个中心资源库中，供未来的报告撰写者使用。

The first paper has now been added to that collection. It’s the work of 175 authors (many of whom had been working on the US report), and it is actually being published in two journals—one operated by the American Geophysical Union and one by the American Meteorological Society. That’s because this paper is intended to provide a roadmap to prioritize future contributions.

目前，第一篇论文已被收录进该合集。这篇论文由 175 位作者共同完成（其中许多人曾参与过美国国家气候评估报告的编写），并同时在两本期刊上发表——一本由美国地球物理联合会运营，另一本由美国气象学会运营。这是因为该论文旨在提供一份路线图，为未来的研究贡献设定优先级。

Assessments

评估报告的作用

Assessment reports like those produced by the US and the IPCC serve several purposes. Primarily, their authors read thousands of public papers so you don’t have to and provide a summary of what the existing evidence can and cannot tell us about a given topic. Not only does that give non-scientists a quick way to catch up on what we know, but it also creates reference points that are heavily cited by researchers themselves as they work to extend our knowledge.

像美国和 IPCC 发布的这类评估报告具有多种用途。最主要的是，作者们阅读了成千上万篇公开发表的论文，从而为你省去了阅读负担，并总结了现有证据在特定议题上能告诉我们什么、不能告诉我们什么。这不仅让非专业人士能快速了解当前的研究进展，还为研究人员在拓展知识边界时提供了被广泛引用的参考点。

In addition to being sources of information about scientific progress, assessment reports are also intended to be directly useful for planning and policymaking at all levels. Whether you’re a major city planning infrastructure to prevent flooding or a farmer looking to separate climate trends from weather variability, these reports should be go-to resources.

除了作为科学进展的信息来源外，评估报告还旨在直接服务于各级规划和决策。无论你是正在规划防洪基础设施的大城市，还是试图区分气候趋势与天气变率的农民，这些报告都应成为首选参考资源。

This new paper highlights a number of topics where scientists might best fill the vacuum created by the White House’s report-quashing actions. That includes some of the basics you would expect in any assessment report, like comparing measured trends to climate model projections. But it also calls out areas that have seen developments in the last few years. Climate modeling has dabbled in machine-learning-based simulations, for example, as well as techniques to generate simulations with finer spatial resolution.

这篇新论文强调了科学家们可以填补白宫叫停报告所留下的空白的若干议题。其中包括任何评估报告中都应具备的基础内容，例如将实测趋势与气候模型预测进行对比。但它也指出了过去几年中出现新进展的领域。例如，气候建模已开始涉足基于机器学习的模拟，以及生成更高空间分辨率模拟的技术。

To-do lists

待办事项

There have also been plenty of changes we’ll need to catch up to on the human side. US climate policy overall has been a chaotic moving target. But on a more local scale beneath that, many climate adaptation and emissions reduction efforts are playing out. And while renewable energy continues to get cheaper and see more deployment, the AI data center rush has significantly reshaped the expectations regarding US electricity demand.

在人类社会层面，我们也需要跟上许多变化。总体而言，美国的气候政策一直处于混乱且不断变动的状态。但在更基层的局部范围内，许多气候适应和减排工作正在进行。尽管可再生能源持续降价并得到更广泛的部署，但人工智能数据中心的激增已显著重塑了人们对美国电力需求的预期。

The paper also calls out ways that assessments could mirror or build on the regional focus employed by past National Climate Assessments. Zooming in on one portion of the United States is a great way to connect the dots and make the science more concrete and relatable. Using Alaska as an example, it notes that research connecting permafrost thaw and wildfires has recently explored how heavy metals like mercury can be subsequently released into surface waters.

该论文还指出，评估报告可以借鉴或延续过去《国家气候评估报告》所采用的区域聚焦方式。聚焦美国某一特定地区是建立联系、使科学研究更具体且更具关联性的好方法。以阿拉斯加为例，文中提到，关于永久冻土融化与野火之间联系的研究，最近探讨了汞等重金属如何随之释放到地表水中。

One silver lining to working outside of a federally coordinated US National Climate Assessment would be that these analyses don’t have to stop at national borders. That could mean expanding analysis into Canada, or it could mean evaluating how trade links the US to a climate impact elsewhere in the world.

在联邦政府协调的《美国国家气候评估报告》之外开展工作的一个积极方面是，这些分析不必局限于国界。这意味着可以将分析范围扩大到加拿大，或者评估贸易如何将美国与世界其他地区的气候影响联系起来。

Following this publication, we’ll begin to see a variety of papers roll in covering these topics, and likely more besides. “I see this roadmap as seeding and accelerating a distributed synthesis effort rather than launching a centrally managed research program,” Melisa Kenney, a leader author on the paper, told Ars. “The goal is for papers to synthesize our current scientific understanding of key topics to support a network of climate assessment efforts occurring at state, local, sectoral, or other scales.”

随着这篇论文的发表，我们将开始看到各种涵盖这些议题的论文陆续涌现，未来可能还会有更多。该论文的领衔作者梅丽莎·肯尼（Melisa Kenney）告诉 Ars：“我将这份路线图视为播种和加速分布式综合研究的努力，而不是启动一个由中心管理的科研项目。其目标是让这些论文综合我们目前对关键议题的科学理解，以支持在州、地方、行业或其他层面开展的气候评估工作网络。”

Any groups working on those assessment reports will then be able to lean on the US Climate Collection in the absence of a high-quality US National Climate Assessment.

在缺乏高质量《美国国家气候评估报告》的情况下，任何从事此类评估报告工作的团体都将能够依托“美国气候合集”开展研究。