The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has been targeted for breakup by the Trump administration.Credit: John Greim/LightRocket/Getty
New Orleans, Louisiana
The administration of US President Donald Trump intends to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a world-leading Earth-science centre in Boulder, Colorado. The centre’s modelling and Earth observations underpin a wide range of US and global research, especially on climate.
“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” wrote Russell Vought, Trump’s budget director, announcing the planned closure in a post yesterday on the social-media platform X. In a statement, the White House called NCAR “the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy”. The plan was first reported by USA Today.
The White House said that the National Science Foundation (NSF), which provides funding for the centre, “will be breaking up NCAR to eliminate Green New Scam research activities. Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location.”
On Wednesday, the consortium that runs NCAR received a letter of intent from the NSF regarding the planned breakup of NCAR, consortium president Antonio Busalacchi told Nature. The letter requested information regarding divesting, transferring or restructuring the various components of NCAR. It mentioned NCAR's research aircraft fleet and its supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as components that might be relocated. “Morale is terrible,” Busalacchi says.
US environmental agency halts funding for its main science division
Any such action will be challenged by members of Congress. “We will fight this reckless directive with every legal tool we have,” Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Boulder in the US House of Representatives, said in a statement. Congress sets the federal budget and can direct the US government to fund NCAR.
A non-profit consortium of more than 130 colleges and universities, known as the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), operates NCAR for the NSF. The most recent agreement between the NSF and UCAR, which was signed in 2023, provides US$938 million to run NCAR for five years. Cancelling that award would eliminate the majority of NCAR’s annual budget. The rest of the budget comes from an array of federal and non-federal sources.
Central resource
... continue reading