A leading climate scientist has challenged a US government report that questions the role of human activity in global warming, saying it misrepresents his research and contains major scientific errors, reports AFP.
Prof Benjamin Santer, an honorary professor at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said the US Department of Energy (DOE) report made "demonstrably incorrect" claims about climate science.
Santer was among the first scientists to identify a clear human "fingerprint" on Earth's climate. His research played a key role in the landmark 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which concluded that human activity was having a measurable impact on the global climate.
However, a DOE report released in July 2025 cited Santer's work while arguing the opposite. The report was published on the same day the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed repealing its 2009 "endangerment finding," which provides the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved forward with revoking the finding, drawing criticism from scientists and environmental groups, who warned the move could undermine efforts to combat climate change and pose risks to public health.
In a study published this week in AGU Advances, Santer and fellow climate scientists Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Thompson of UEA and Colorado State University, and Qiang Fu of the University of Washington reaffirmed that human activities remain the primary driver of global warming.
The researchers said the DOE report should not be relied upon in legal or policy decisions related to climate regulation.
"We view it as both important and consistent with scientific precedent to rebut an incorrect scientific claim made in the DOE report," Santer said.
"Setting the record straight in the peer-reviewed literature is particularly important when demonstrably incorrect scientific claims are made in official government reports," he added.
Santer said one of the strongest pieces of evidence for human-caused climate change is the distinct pattern of warming in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, and cooling in the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere.
According to him, climate models predicted this pattern more than 50 years ago, and satellite observations have since confirmed it.
"The claim to the contrary made in the US DOE review of climate science is factually incorrect," he said.
"Our analysis clearly shows that the DOE report is not a reliable source of information on the vertical structure of atmospheric temperature changes, which is one of the key pieces of evidence for human influence on the global climate."
The authors also said scientists have raised concerns about other sections of the DOE report, including its interpretation of evidence linking climate change to human activity. They noted that the report was cited 16 times in the EPA's proposal last year.
Following a lawsuit alleging the DOE failed to follow required federal advisory procedures, the team that prepared the report was dissolved in early September.
However, the report has neither been withdrawn nor corrected.
"The report is still available on the DOE website and continues to be cited publicly by DOE Secretary Wright as a credible source of information on climate science. It is not," Santer said.
Bd-Pratidin English/ AM
