Feds to dismantle National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado

Dec. 17 (UPI) -- The President Donald Trump administration announced it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., one of the world's top climate research labs.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced the closing Tuesday night.

"This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country," Vought said on X.

The center was founded in 1960 for research in atmospheric chemistry and physical meteorology.

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Vought said the center's "vital functions" like weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved to another department. There will be a review of the center's "green new scam research activities."

NCAR helps universities and academics by providing state-of-the-art resources for advanced earth system research. It's responsible for some of the biggest scientific advances in weather and climate knowledge. Its scientists study a wide range of topics, like air pollution, ocean currents and climate change.

NCAR scientists studied downdrafts in the 1970s and '80s, which led to the development of wind shear detection systems at airports, preventing many future aviation accidents.

The center also created GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from aircraft into hurricanes to gather data about the storms and improve forecasts and understanding of the storms.

It's operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which is a consortium of more than 100 universities. But most of its funding comes from the government through National Science Foundation grants.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, released a statement Tuesday on the closure. He said the state hasn't been notified of the change.

"If true, public safety is at risk, and science is being attacked," he said.

Polis added that NCAR's work is 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. If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery."

Scientists are also lamenting the loss.

"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, The New York Times reported. "Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. Its end is unthinkable."

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote on X that the institution is "quite literally our global mothership."

"Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet," she added.

Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, spent a third of his career at NCAR.

Though he believes NCAR isn't perfect, Pielke told USA Today that it's "a crown jewel of the U.S. scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved, not shuttered."

"If the U.S. is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change," he said.