President Donald Trump gestures as Director-General of World Trade Organization Roberto Azevedo looks on during a news conference at the 50th World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2020.

DAVOS, Switzerland — Climate scientists at the World Economic Forum have hit back at President Donald Trump, saying their role is simply to provide evidence of the climate emergency.

In a keynote address to participants of the annual conference earlier this week, Trump said that "to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom."

The U.S. president did not name anyone directly during his speech, but he did encourage those in attendance to ignore environmental "alarmists" and their "predictions of the apocalypse."

An intensifying climate crisis is top of the agenda at the forum, which takes place in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos.

The event, which is often criticized for being out of touch with reality, has said it aims to assist governments and international institutions in tracking progress toward the Paris Agreement and the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals.

"Some could call climate scientists 'prophets of doom,'" Gail Whiteman, founder of Arctic Basecamp and director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University, said during a panel session on Wednesday.

"I don't agree with that — I think we just simply give the evidence."

The forum comes after a 12-month period which saw the hottest year on record for the world's oceans, the second-hottest year for global average temperatures and wildfires from the U.S. to the Amazon to Australia.