The Bush administration released a climate change assessment on Thursday — four years late and pushed forward by a court order — that said human-induced global warming will likely lead to problems like droughts in the U.S. West and stronger hurricanes.

President George W. Bush’s stance on the issue has evolved from denying climate science to acknowledging that global warming is happening. In March, watchdog groups said Bush’s decision to intervene in setting air pollution standards was part of a pattern of meddling in environmental science.

The “Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the United States” released on Thursday synthesized previous reports, including those by the government’s climate change science program and last year’s work by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is intended to give U.S. government agencies and lawmakers in Congress a single document to refer to when forming climate policy.

The assessment was praised by environmental groups at the forefront of the lawsuit that led to the court order forcing the administration to issue the report by the end of May.

“Hats off to the federal scientists who were allowed to do their work,” Kassie Siegel, climate program director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said by telephone.

But she criticized the administration for waiting until the last months of the Bush presidency to release the assessment.

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