The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado
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The Trump administration’s decision to close a leading atmospheric sciences research center is a blow to weather forecasting and climate modeling that could further expose humanity to the impacts of global warming.
In a statement to The United States todayWhite House official Russ Vought said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) was a source of “climate alarmism” and would be dismantled. “New research on green scams” will be eliminated, while “vital functions” like weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved elsewhere, the White House said.
NCAR models support reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which countries rely on to make decisions on how to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to extreme weather.
“Closing it would lead to greater uncertainty about what our climate future might be and make us less able to prepare effectively,” says Michael Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey. “It’s hard to see this as anything other than shooting the messenger.”
NCAR was launched in 1960 to facilitate atmospheric science on a scale too large for individual universities. Its 830 employees are involved in research “from the bottom of the oceans to the heart of the Sun,” according to its unofficial motto, with programs to monitor everything from floods and wildfires to space weather.
At its laboratory high in the Colorado Rockies, NCAR invented the GPS probe, a sensor-laden device that is dropped in hurricanes, revolutionizing our understanding of tropical storms. Its researchers have developed wind shear warning systems for airports that have helped prevent countless accidents.
But perhaps his greatest contribution was providing data, models and intensive calculations to other researchers. Weather Underground, which in the 1990s was one of the first to offer local forecasts online, would not have existed without NCAR’s weather software and data, according to its founder, meteorologist Jeff Masters.
NCAR develops and administers the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, which is widely used both for daily forecasts and for the study of regional climates. He also collaborates with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to advance weather modeling, particularly for forecasting severe storms.
If this work is disrupted, improved forecasts on weather apps and TV news could be disrupted, at a time when extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Closing NCAR is like “on the eve of World War II we decided to stop funding weapons R&D,” Masters says.
“If we don’t know what’s coming, it’s going to cost more and it’s going to kill more people,” he says.
NCAR administers the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the first global climate model designed for universities. CESM has supported a wide variety of research, from estimates of current global carbon emissions to future changes in ocean currents, the frequency of heat waves, and the melting of glaciers and sea ice.
“It’s probably the most widely used model in the world,” says Richard Rood of the University of Michigan.
NCAR holds biannual meetings with users to decide how to improve the model, which can be run on its servers or downloaded and operated locally. Its closure will likely end further development of CESM, as well as maintenance intended to fix bugs.
Colin Carlson of Yale University was one of several scientists who posted on social media about the importance of NCAR. It uses its climate models to estimate how much cholera and yellow fever vaccines will be needed as the climate changes and when dengue becomes endemic in Florida. “We need NCAR to do our job,” Carlson said on Bluesky.
NCAR also flies a C-130 cargo plane and a Gulfstream business jet modified to conduct research to the edge of the stratosphere, and it helps operate a King Air propeller plane equipped to study cloud physics.
Between 2009 and 2011, the Gulfstream jet jumped several times from the North Pole to the South Pole, climbing between 150 and 9,000 meters, to carry out the first comprehensive study of CO.2 and other gases in the atmosphere. He also took measurements of the solar corona during the 2017 solar eclipse.
Its planes help monitor air pollution and calibrate satellite instruments, according to Rood.
His research on aerosols would be key to understanding the effects of geoengineering, he adds. Programs such as spreading aerosols to block sunlight have been proposed to prevent abrupt changes in climate.
“Getting rid of climate research like this would really cause us to fly blind, even more blindly, into decisions about geoengineering, as well as tipping points,” says Rood.
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