You may not know it, but you benefit from the expertise of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
For more than half a century, the federally funded laboratory has been instrumental in developing weather models that have improved the forecasting of extreme events such as hurricanes, thereby saving lives. Your weather app can predict the future thanks in large part to a laboratory also known as NCAR. Its researchers also study air pollutants such as wildfire smoke. flying airplanes through plumeshelping to protect public health. More broadly, NCAR is a preeminent leader in advancing climate science, collecting datasets, and developing complex Earth system models.
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That's why Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the Trump administration plans to shut down the operation. “This facility is one of the largest sources of climate panic in the country,” Vought wrote on Tuesday on X. “Due diligence is being carried out and any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another organization or location.”
In a separate statement In a statement released Wednesday, the National Science Foundation, which founded NCAR in 1960, said it “remains committed to providing a world-class infrastructure for weather modeling, space weather research and forecasting, and other critical functions. To do this, NSF will engage with partner agencies, the research community, and other stakeholders to obtain feedback to revise the functions of the work currently performed by NCAR.”
The plan was met with widespread alarm and backlash in the scientific community. “NSF NCAR research is critical to ensuring American prosperity by protecting lives and property, supporting the economy, and strengthening national security,” wrote Antonio Busalacchi, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which administers NCAR on behalf of NSF. “Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR would undermine our nation's ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters.”
If NCAR is disbanded, the void will not be filled by other groups working in isolation, the researchers say. “This is the latest step in a long line of steps that are weakening weather and climate science in the United States,” said Christina Dahl, vice president of science at the research group Climate Central. “And ultimately, all of us, the people of this country, will pay for it, whether it’s now or in 10 years.”
The fallout from NCAR's assassination will also reverberate internationally, as the center is a pillar of the scientific community around the world. For example, its weather and climate databases are critical resources for researchers around the world. “This would be a huge blow not only to American science, but to weather and climate science, forecasting, and disaster resilience around the world,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, in his paper. live broadcast Wednesday. (Swain is also a research partner at NCAR.) “And I would go so far as to say that this would be an incredible, truly shocking, self-inflicted wound to American competitiveness, in general, at a very high level.”
Although the National Center for Atmospheric Research employs more than 800 people, its work extends to nearly everyone involved in weather, climate and disaster research, Swain added, and by extension, to the people who collaborate in those fields. Swain called NCAR a “special institution” that has no parallel in the United States or abroad. Her research and models are widely disseminated and used by policymakers, academic institutions and industry trying to adapt to climate change.
Researchers can also use NCAR data. supercomputing resources for processing complex data. “This is really a starting point for university researchers across the country who want to do experiments with climate models,” Dahl said. “Because very, very few institutions in the country have that kind of computing power.”
With relatively small budgets compared to disaster spending, NCAR and federal agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration actually bring huge dividends to American societyin property and lives saved. (NFS provided $123 million for NCAR in 2025For example, thanks to ever-improving hurricane forecasts, officials know which coastal communities to evacuate when a storm approaches. Conversely, they also know who they don't need to evacuate, preventing disaster and saving money. By helping to forecast wind events, NCAR helps electric utilities and communities prepare for the conditions that caused and inflated so many fires in the American West. (In May, the Trump administration stopped updating billion-dollar federal disaster database. But according to Climate Central, resurrected this databasethe USA had 14 of them in the first half of 2025.)
Overall, by better understanding how climate change is causing more natural disasters, the country will be better able to adapt to what's happening as the planet steadily warms. “The research conducted at NCAR is an investment by every taxpayer in the United States, and it benefits us all,” said Mark Alessi, a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists focusing on climate attribution science. “We can predict the weather days in advance, warning of hurricanes, extreme precipitation and drought.”
As with many other Trump administration efforts attack science, restructure federal agenciesAnd force states to abandon climate actionit starts as a plan, not a completion. That means people can still call their representatives and oppose the proposal, Swain said. “This is something that has very little public support and quite possibly bipartisan opposition in Congress,” Swain added, “if the right people become aware of the problem quickly enough.”
