GMRI Scientist Helps Set the Research Agenda for Future U.S. Climate Assessments
Announcements | Sep 23, 2026
Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Janet Duffy-Anderson, co-authored a new commentary identifying the research priorities that will shape the next generation of U.S. climate assessments, from national reports down to community-level planning in the Gulf of Maine.
Dr. Janet Duffy-Anderson, our Chief Scientific Officer, is a co-author of the commentary "Research priorities for robust climate assessments in the United States," published in Earth's Future and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The paper brings together 175 authors to outline research priorities that can inform future national, regional, local, sectoral, and topical climate assessments.
The commentary is the first paper in the U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions, a joint special collection from the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society that will publish U.S.-focused climate assessment science and research synthesis papers meant to inform future national and regional assessments.
Dr. Duffy-Anderson led the writing of the commentary's Oceans section, which identifies priorities for understanding how warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and other pressures are transforming marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. The section calls for innovation in ocean observation, data science, and forecasting, better integration of ecological, social, and economic information, and more adaptive approaches to ocean governance.
Climate assessments are most valuable when they help people anticipate change, giving them time to make decisions before options narrow.
Janet Duffy-Anderson, Ph.D. Chief Scientific Officer, SVP Science and Research
The commentary identifies assessment opportunities and research needs across planetary-scale systems, environmental settings, economic sectors, U.S. regions, and U.S. international interests. Across these areas, the authors point to several cross-cutting priorities for research synthesis, including how greenhouse gas emissions continue to alter and amplify climate hazards, how compounding extremes and cascading risks are straining legacy policies, infrastructure, and institutions, how social systems shape both climate impacts and responses, and how future assessments should evaluate mitigation, adaptation, disaster management, climate interventions, and resilience planning as a single climate action portfolio.
Scientific assessments synthesize complex bodies of evidence so households, communities, businesses, institutions, and governments can make informed decisions as climate hazards intensify. The most recent U.S. National Climate Assessment was published in 2023. Scientific understanding has advanced since then, and climate assessments are continuing at the state, local, and business level. The commentary argues that the pace of assessment and the integration of science with decision-making need to keep up as climate impacts continue to grow.
About the U.S. Climate Collection
The U.S. Climate Collection: Informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions is a joint initiative of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to advance assessment-ready climate science for the United States. The collection brings together synthesis papers and other assessment-related research across AGU and AMS journals that can inform future national and regional assessments.
