National Center for Atmospheric Research to Be Dismantled, Trump Administration Says

Russell Vought, the White House budget director, called the laboratory a source of “climate alarmism.”

The Trump administration said it will be dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions.

The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming.

But in a social media post announcing the move late on Tuesday, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said that the federal government would be “breaking up” the institution.

Mr. Vought wrote that a “comprehensive review is underway” and that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

USA Today first reported on the White House plans.

Scientists, meteorologists and lawmakers said the move was an attack on critical scientific research and would harm the United States.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research was originally founded to provide scientists studying Earth’s atmosphere with cutting-edge resources, such as supercomputers, that individual universities could not afford on their own. It is now widely considered a global leader in both weather and climate change research, with programs aimed at tracking severe weather events, modeling floods and understanding how solar activity affects the Earth’s atmosphere.

For decades, the center has operated with the freedom to develop outside-the-box ideas that have advanced weather forecasting. Its researchers identified atmospheric patterns that meteorologists rely on today to predict the weather.

In the 1970s, NCAR scientists Roland Madden and Paul Julian discovered a “pulse” of clouds and rain that circumvents the equator every 30 to 90 days. This phenomenon, now known as the Madden–Julian oscillation, fundamentally changed the field, helping forecasters predict weather patterns weeks to months in advance.

NCAR scientists also developed GPS dropsondes, instruments that are dropped from aircraft to gather crucial data about a cyclone’s strength and center. This data became pivotal for the computer models used to predict hurricane paths today.

The center’s research has often proved useful in unexpected places, such as when its studies of downdrafts in the lower atmosphere in the 1970s and 1980s led to development of wind shear detection systems around airports that helped address the cause of hundreds of aviation accidents during that era. Those systems still protect airplanes today.

The lab is operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit consortium of more than 100 universities, but the vast majority of its funding comes from the federal government, including through hundreds of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation.

Scientists said dismantling the center’s climate research would do irreparable damage to cutting-edge meteorology and advances in weather forecasting.

“It’s the beating heart of our field,” Kim Cobb, a climate scientist and the director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, wrote in a post on Bluesky. “Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists.”

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote on X that the institution is “quite literally our global mother ship.” She said nearly everyone who researches climate and weather around the world has worked at or with NCAR.

It “supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes — the largest community climate model in the world,” she wrote, adding, “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet.”

Mr. Trump routinely mocks climate change as a hoax and his administration has labeled virtually all efforts to study climate change, reduce the level of dangerous greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or protect communities from the impacts of global warming as “alarmism.”

The administration said the center had supported what it called frivolous and ideological issues, such as research on how to protect wind turbines from hurricanes and a project to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into studies of how climate change would affect coastal communities.

Yet experts said much of the center’s activities focused on basic atmospheric science that had little to do with political debates over climate change.

“If you asked me where you’d find the most politicized elements of climate research, NCAR would be way down that list,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has often criticized climate researchers elsewhere for engaging in activism.

“A lot of what NCAR does is atmospheric science beyond climate change, like improving short-term weather forecasts,” added Dr. Pielke, who worked at the center early in his career. “Destroying it makes no sense.”

Putting the facility on the chopping block would also be an economic blow to Colorado. President Trump has feuded with Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, in recent days, calling him a “weak and pathetic man” and accusing the governor with no evidence of being “run” by Venezuelan gang members.

The dispute stems from the case of a former state election official in Colorado, Tina Peters, who was convicted of multiple felonies after she gave Mr. Trump’s supporters unauthorized access to voting machines after the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Trump has pardoned Ms. Peters, but Colorado officials have countered that presidential pardons do not apply to state crimes.

A senior White House official, who declined to be identified, said in response to the announcement that Colorado constituents would be better served if Governor Polis wanted to work with the president.

Governor Polis said in a statement that the federal government had yet to inform the state of its plans. “If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” he said.

“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” the governor said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward, we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”

On Wednesday afternoon, the facility’s headquarters on a mesa above Boulder were locked and empty, closed because of a ferocious windstorm that had created critical wildfire danger after weeks of near-record high temperatures and almost no snow.

“This hits so close to home, and on a day when we have summer clothes on when we should have snow,” Christine Cowles, 61, said as she and a few friends hiked through the brittle grass leading up to the facility’s entrance sign and made plans to protest the White House’s proposal.

To Ms. Cowles, the fact that Boulder was bracing for a potential wildfire on a 66-degree December day demonstrated the importance of NCAR’s research on climate change in a hotter, drier West. In December 2021, she watched the Marshall fire sweep through a suburban neighborhood near her home, destroying 1,000 structures and killing two people. She said the danger would only get worse if the administration gutted efforts to track and understand climate change.

Others visitors hiking up to the trailhead that sits beside the facility’s pink headquarters, designed by I.M. Pei, called the closure announcement a political attack against a Democratic state that briefly kicked Mr. Trump off the ballot, has opposed his immigration crackdown and refused to free one of his high-profile political allies from prison.

“It’s a blatant attack,” Jennifer Roos, 57, a retired software engineer, said. “They’re going after blue states.”

Mayor Aaron Brockett of Boulder called the facility an economic and scientific cornerstone in the university town. He said that dismantling it would erase hundreds of good-paying jobs and could also hurt research firms and other businesses that are based in Boulder to be close to scientific agencies like NCAR.

“The ripple effects would be significant,” he said. “You’d have those iconic buildings empty. It would have a very strong negative impact on the Boulder community.”

In New Orleans, where many of the world’s top Earth science researchers are gathered for an annual meeting, Antonio Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which operates the center, said, “What we are seeing is the administration canceling the freedom of scientific thought and inquiry.”

Eric Niiler contributed reporting from New Orleans, and Scott Dance and Judson Jones contributed from New York.

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