College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Community Sustainability

East Lansing, MI — September 22, 2026 — Michigan State University today announced that Steven Gray, Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability, is a co-author of the commentary “Research priorities for robust climate assessments in the United States” published in Earth’s Future and 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 of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society that will publish U.S.-focused climate assessment science and research synthesis papers that can inform future national and sub-national assessments. 

Gray contributed to the commentary through expertise in environmental decision-making and the integration of scientific and stakeholder knowledge into climate adaptation and resilience decisions. Gray's contribution focused on the science of climate response management, including how individuals, communities and institutions make, coordinate, and evaluate climate-related decisions. His work emphasizes how governance, knowledge, social and behavioral factors, and interactions among different response strategies can shape the effectiveness of climate adaptation and resilience efforts.

"Climate change is not just a scientific problem; it is a decision-making problem. Communities and institutions increasingly have to choose among, and coordinate, different approaches to adaptation, resilience, disaster management and mitigation, often with incomplete information and competing priorities," said Gray. "Future climate assessments can help by moving beyond identifying risks to providing the evidence needed to understand which responses work, for whom, under what conditions, and with what trade-offs."

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 identify 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 and implementation decisions as a 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 by states, localities and businesses. The commentary argues that the pace of assessment and the integration of science with decision-making must accelerate 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 catalyze assessment-ready climate science for the United States. The open access collection comprises synthesis papers and other assessment-related research across the AGU and AMS family of journals that can inform future national and sub-national assessments.

AGU Contact: Josh Weinberg, news@agu.org

AMS Contact: Katie Pflaumer, mediarelations@ametsoc.org