Feds failing in bid to take a supercomputer from a climate research center

In December, the Trump administration abruptly announced it would shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a Boulder, Colorado-based facility that helps researchers perform studies of weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and more. The news came as a shock, given that the government had never identified serious deficiencies in the management of NCAR and its associated supercomputing center in Wyoming.

Nevertheless, the government ordered the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation, to help it prepare to transfer the Wyoming to a different operator. UCAR sued the government and, on Monday, won a preliminary injunction that places the transfer of the facility on hold.

Is that your final decision?

NCAR is what is termed a “Federally-Funded Research and Development Center” meant to support researchers in the academic community. Rather than having its own research agenda, it provides facilities, equipment, and expertise to support projects that are too large or complex for researchers to pursue on their own. NCAR has been around since the early 1960s and has become a critical resource for the global atmospheric science community.

So, it was a shock for many that the government would attempt to shut it down and distribute the resources it maintains, such as research aircraft and the supercomputing center. The government solicited public feedback on that decision, but UCAR took no chances and sued. As part of that suit, UCAR sought a preliminary injunction that would put the transfer of its supercomputing center on hold.

To get that injunction, UCAR would have to show that it was likely to prevail and that it would experience irreparable harm if the court didn’t intervene.

The judge in this case, Brooke Jackson, ruled that the issue was one his court could address based on the Administrative Procedures Act. The government had argued that no decision had been made, and therefore that there were no grounds for the suit. But Jackson noted that as early as February—before the public comment period on the decision had even closed—government officials were telling UCAR that “[the National Science Foundation] has decided to transfer stewardship” of the supercomputing center.