National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
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The Trump administration's decision to close the world's leading atmospheric research center is a blow to weather forecasting and climate modeling that could leave humanity more vulnerable to the effects of global warming.
In a statement for USA todayWhite House spokesman Russ Vought said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is the source of a “climate panic” and will be disbanded. “New environmental scam research” will be stopped and “vital functions” such as weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved elsewhere, the White House said.
NCAR models underpin reports from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which countries rely on to make decisions about how to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to extreme weather.
“A shutdown will lead to greater uncertainty about what our climate future might look like and leave us unable to prepare effectively,” says Michael Meredith at the British Antarctic Survey. “It's hard to see this as anything other than shooting the messenger.”
NCAR was founded in 1960 to promote atmospheric research too large for individual universities to handle. Its 830 employees are involved in research “from the ocean floor to the core of the sun.” according to under its unofficial motto, with programs to monitor everything from floods and wildfires to space weather.
In its hilltop laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, NCAR invented the GPS dropsonde, a sensor-laden device that is dropped during hurricanes. revolutionary our understanding of tropical storms. Its researchers have developed wind shear warning systems for airports that have prevented countless accidents.
But perhaps the company's greatest contribution has been providing data, modeling and supercomputers to other researchers. Weather Underground, which was one of the first to offer local forecasts online in the 1990s, would not exist without software and weather data from NCAR, according to its founder, meteorologist Jeff Masters.
NCAR develops and manages a weather research and forecasting model that is widely used for both routine forecasting and regional climate studies. This is also cooperates with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop weather modeling, especially for forecasting severe storms.
If that work is disrupted, it could stunt improvements in forecasts on weather apps and TV news at a time when extreme weather becomes more common. Closing NCAR is like if “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 will cost more and cause more people to die,” he says.
NCAR operates the Community Earth System Model (CESM), the first global climate model developed for universities. CESM has supported a wealth of research, from estimates of current global carbon emissions to future changes in ocean currents, heat wave frequency, and the melting of glaciers and sea ice.
“It’s probably the most used model in the world,” says Richard Rood at the University of Michigan.
NCAR meets with users every two years to decide how to improve the model, which can be run on its servers or downloaded and used locally. Its closure will likely end further development of CESM as well as bug fix maintenance.
Colin Carlson from Yale University was one of many scientists who posted on social media about the importance of NCAR. He uses his climate models to estimate how many cholera and yellow fever vaccines will be needed as the climate changes and when dengue fever 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 all the way to the edge of the stratosphere, and he also helps fly a King Air propeller plane equipped to study the physics of clouds.
Between 2009 and 2011, Gulfstream flew from the North Pole to the South Pole several times, climbing from 150 to 9,000 meters to complete the first integrated flight. survey CO2 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, Rood said.
His research on aerosols will be vital to understanding the effects of geoengineering, he adds. Schemes such as spreading aerosols to block sunlight have been proposed to avoid abrupt climate changes.
“Getting rid of climate research like this will really lead to us making decisions blindly, even more blindly, about geoengineering and about tipping points,” Rood says.
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