US Plans to Dismantle Major Climate Research Center
Summarize this article with:
The US plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a key climate-science hub in Boulder, Colorado, which the Trump administration says strayed from its mission decades ago by taking up climate change research. The announcement came as a shock to the scientific community as well as Colorado officials, who have vowed to fight the proposal.Author of the article:You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.(Bloomberg) — The US plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a key climate-science hub in Boulder, Colorado, which the Trump administration says strayed from its mission decades ago by taking up climate change research. The announcement came as a shock to the scientific community as well as Colorado officials, who have vowed to fight the proposal. Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on X Tuesday night that the center, which is sponsored and funded by the National Science Foundation, would be dismantled.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againInterested in more newsletters? Browse here.A senior White House official on Wednesday called NCAR a stronghold for left-wing climate activism. Following a review, the official said, NSF will break up NCAR to eliminate climate research activities, while functions such as weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved to another site or entity. The move, first reported by USA Today, advances the Trump administration’s aggressive attacks on climate science and policy. The administration has shuttered research programs and slashed jobs across agencies that do work related to climate change, though some of those moves have been reversed by the courts. It has also rolled back environmental regulations and moved to block some renewable energy projects while strongly promoting fossil fuels.
President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job” and dismissed policies to counter it as “The Green New Scam.” Scientists are nearly unanimous in agreement that the atmosphere is warming due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. Last year was the hottest since record-keeping began in the 19th century, and the 10 warmest years have all been in the last decade. NCAR has 800-plus employees and received $123 million in core funding from the NSF in fiscal year 2025. Since its founding in 1960, generations of scientists have visited its famous Mesa Laboratory, a striking concrete structure designed by I.M. Pei. The lab’s researchers have made breakthroughs including one of the first major global climate-science workhorses, the Community Earth System Model; launched in 1983, it remains one of the most powerful and tested ways for scientists to explain the effect of greenhouse gases on the physical world. NCAR has also long worked with businesses to train people and generate data useful to industry. “Every country in the world would love to have something like” the center, said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, calling the plan for its breakup “scientific vandalism.” “It is the cornerstone to climate science in this country,” Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University, said of NCAR. The facility had “profoundly” shaped her research and that of many other researchers around the world, she said. “To shutter this facility is, frankly, a national security risk,” Cobb said, given its cutting-edge work on extreme weather and across fields including machine learning and AI. NSF said in a statement that it is “reviewing the structure of the research and observational capabilities” of the center, and that it will explore changing “the scope of modeling and forecasting research and operations to concentrate on needs such as seasonal weather prediction, severe storms, and space weather.”NSF, NCAR’s core funder, is currently operating under a stopgap sending bill that runs out on Jan. 30. Many open positions at NCAR were eliminated earlier this year, Science magazine first reported. The center is managed on NSF’s behalf by an academic consortium, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. UCAR President Antonio Busalacchi said in a statement Tuesday that although aware of reports of the administration’s intentions to break up the center, “we do not have additional information about any such plan.” The White House official said that NCAR shifted its focus to climate change research in the 1980s and 1990s, for which it received generous federal funding. By restructuring the lab, the official said, President Trump can return NCAR to its original mission of weather research.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, said in a statement that the state is yet to receive details about the administration’s plans for NCAR. “If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery,” he said. Trump has lambasted Polis in recent days for not releasing Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk in prison after being convicted on state charges of tampering with voting machines.Democratic Colorado lawmakers described the NCAR plan as a form of retaliation and said they’ll fight to stop it. In a joint statement, Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and Representative Joe Neguse praised the center for “life-saving breakthroughs” and said efforts “to dismantle this institution and its essential programs are deeply dangerous and blatantly retaliatory.”“We intend to fight back against attempts to gut this cutting-edge research institution with every tool we have,” they said. —With assistance from Skylar Woodhouse, Leslie Kaufman and Brian K. Sullivan.(Updates throughout.)Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.