JOHN YANG: Late last month, hundreds of volunteers, scientists and experts across the country were told by the Trump administration that they were no longer needed to compile the next national climate assessment.

That's a report mandated by Congress to periodically catalog the ways climate change is affecting the nation.

It's considered the government's flagship document on the topic.

The sixth edition is to be released by 2028, but the message said that its scope is currently being reevaluated.

Elizabeth Koebele was among the recipients of that message.

She's an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and was leading the team studying the Southwest.

Elizabeth, what's the purpose of this document and how is it used?

ELIZABETH KOEBELE, Former Chapter Leader, 6th National Climate Assessment: It's a congressionally mandated report, and it's produced every four years under the direction of the U.S.

Global Change Research Program or the USGCRP.

And what it does is it really analyzes the impacts of global change on the United States with a focus on how such changes might put things that Americans value most at risk, whether that's our national security, our community safety, our resources, those sorts of things.

It's really a synthesis of the newest and most relevant research on global change.

And it's divided into chapters that focus on things like systems such as water or specific regions like the Southwest, which I was leading.

JOHN YANG: And there are no policy prescription in this or recommendations in this.

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: You're right.

It's meant to be a nonpartisan report that's policy relevant, but not policy prescriptive and this means it synthesizes information on global climate change that can help decision makers across federal, regional, state, local levels make the best decisions for their sectors and their communities.

So there are no recommendations for specific decisions, but it does gather the state of the art information on these changes and on potential mitigation and adaptation actions so that we're providing the best information to these decision makers for their communities.

JOHN YANG: In addition to helping these decision makers.

What's its contribution to overall climate research?

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: I think the National Climate Assessment points out important knowledge gaps in our research and can potentially provide directions to scientists, whether in academic positions or whether in federal agencies that can help build knowledge to make our country more resilient to global change.

It can guide their work in developing programs and policies aimed at everything from natural resource management to national security, and overall enhance our understanding of how climate change puts things that we value most at risk.

JOHN YANG: President Trump has said that he thinks the stated effects of climate change are overstated.

The administration dismantling a lot of climate change research.

Given that, what do you think it means when the administration says that it's reevaluating the scope of this document?

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: Unfortunately, the authors that were released from the assessment haven't gotten any further information at this time about that reassessment of the scope.

The report is congressionally mandated, so it could potentially be the case that the Trump administration will select a new set of authors which for us starting this assessment process and took almost a year to select and onboard all of the authors and get them trained and started working on the assessment.

So that would need to happen pretty quickly in order to meet the assessment deadline.

But right now we're really waiting to see what the administration says and what guidance that can provide on how to get a report out on the mandated timeline.

JOHN YANG: Overall, how does the administration's approach to climate change, how do you think that's going to affect climate change research?

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: I think that we're already seeing the effects of climate change on so many sectors in so many communities in the U.S. and it's really important for us to have the state of the art research on how climate's affecting these different communities, how climate's affecting things we value in order to protect Americans across the United States, to protect our security, to protect our economy.

So I do hope that we are able to move some sort of report forward in order to provide information to decision makers who can help achieve these things.

JOHN YANG: Could this be done without the support of the administration, without the support of the government?

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: One thing that I think is really important about the national climate assessment is that the report goes through a really rigorous process of review at several stages.

And these reviews are done by the public, by federal agencies.

And all of the chapters in the NCAA are really required to uphold very high standards of transparency by predicting providing what we call traceable accounts of our sort of assessment process in addition to our findings.

And it takes a lot of infrastructure, coordination, resources to support that kind of thorough policy, relevant, up to date, transparent assessment.

So while I do think it's possible that we may still be able to get some of this information out through other assessments, I do think that this is a really critical government function to support this report because the findings are so relevant and important to Americans across the country.

JOHN YANG: Elizabeth Koebele of the University of Nevada, Reno, thank you very much.

ELIZABETH KOEBELE: Thanks very much for having me.