The Trump administration said Tuesday it was breaking up one of the world’s preeminent earth and atmospheric research institutions, based in Colorado, over concerns about “climate alarmism” — a move that comes amid escalating attacks from the White House against the state’s Democratic lawmakers.
“The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado,” wrote Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget on X. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
The plan was first reported by USA Today.
The NCAR laboratory in Boulder was founded in 1960 at the base of the Rocky Mountains to conduct research and educate future scientists. Its resources include supercomputers, valuable datasets, and high-tech research planes.
The announcement drew outrage and concern from scientists and local lawmakers, who said it could imperil the country’s weather and climate forecasting, and appeared to take officials and employees by surprise.
NCAR’s dismantling would be a major loss for scientific research, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at NCAR and an honorary academic in physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Trenberth, who joined NCAR in 1984 and officially retired in 2020, said the research center is key to advanced climate science discoveries as well as in informing the climate models that produce the weather forecasts we see on the nightly news.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the state had not received information about the administration’s intentions to dismantle NCAR.
“If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” said Polis. “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The action comes as Republicans have escalated their attacks on Polis and others in the state for their handling of a case involving Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted in state court on felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump announced last week that he is pardoning Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence, but it is unclear whether Trump has that authority, because she was not convicted in federal court.
In a joint statement, Colorado’s two Democratic senators, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, and Rep. Joe Neguse (D., Colo.) slammed the move and vowed to fight back against it.
In his social media post, Vought said that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location” — but did not specify further.
“The Colorado governor obviously isn’t willing to work with the president,” said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The official declined to cite any specifics about how Polis is refusing to cooperate, from the administration’s perspective, but denied that the move was in response to the state’s refusal to release Peters from prison.
The facility “is not in line with the president’s agenda,” the official added, noting that it had “been on the radar” of the administration “for a while.”
The National Science Foundation, the federal science agency that funds the center, was blindsided by the announcement, according to a person familiar with NSF operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. But they said facilities managers at NSF will need to be involved in moving assets or capabilities. An NSF spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about the plan to dismantle NCAR.
Antonio Busalacchi, the president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which oversees NCAR, said it was aware of reports to break up the center but did not have “additional information about any such plan.”
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters,” Busalacchi said.
An internal email obtained by the Washington Post, sent Tuesday night, emphasized the critical work NCAR does for “community safety and resilience.”
Busalacchi wrote that the news had come as a shock, and the institution had reached out to NSF for more information. “We understand that this situation is incredibly distressing, and we ask that you all continue doing what you have done so well all year — provide support for one another as we navigate this turbulent time,” Busalacchi wrote.
The center is “quite literally our global mother ship,” Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech University professor and chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, wrote on X. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”
NCAR plays a unique role in the scientific community by bringing together otherwise siloed specialists to collaborate on some of the biggest climate and weather questions of our time, Caspar Ammann, a former research scientist at the center, said in an email.
“Without NCAR, a lot could not happen,” he said. “A lot of research at US Universities would immediately get hampered, industry would lose access to reliable base data.”
Ammann added that around the world, weather and climate services use NCAR modeling and forecasting tools.
The Colorado-based center draws scientists and lecturers from all over the world, and through its education programs has helped produce future scientists, Trenberth said.
He said he feared not just for the discoveries and data that would be lost if the center were to close, but for the early careers that could also be affected or destroyed.
“If this sort of thing happens, things will go on for a little while,” he said. “But the next generation of people who deal with weather and science in the United States will be lost.”
