This commentary is by Clif Harald, principal of First Flatiron Consulting, which specializes in community economic vitality. He co-founded the Boulder Economic Council at the Boulder Chamber and led the program for 12 years. Most recently, he served on the faculty of CU Boulder’s Outdoor Recreation Economy program. A Colorado native and CU graduate, he has lived in the Boulder area for more than 50 years.
Eighty-six years ago, a young astronomer arrived in the Colorado mountains to study the sun. Walter Orr Roberts, known to most as Walt Roberts, would rise to become the single most influential figure in Boulder’s emergence as a world leader in atmospheric and Earth-system science. As the founding director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the leader of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Roberts did more than conduct science. He built the partnerships, institutions and culture that allowed an entire field to flourish.
He could not have known when he moved to Colorado in 1940 that his work would help transform Boulder into a global center of scientific research. Nor that the institutions he built would one day face threats to their very existence from a sitting U.S. president — threats that now challenge the future of Boulder’s research ecosystem.
From a mountain observatory to a national mission
Roberts’ Boulder story began in the late 1930s at Harvard College. Astronomers at the Harvard Observatory believed their work demanded the clearer skies at higher altitude. One of them, Donald Menzel, secured land and funding from the Climax Molybdenum Mine near Leadville and decided to relocate the observatory to Colorado.
Roberts, a graduate student working at Harvard’s observatory, was appointed superintendent and sole researcher of the new Climax Observatory. In 1940, the 25-year-old Roberts moved west with his wife, Janet. Using the first coronagraph in the Western Hemisphere, Roberts created artificial solar eclipses to study the sun’s corona. His work demonstrated that solar activity affected not only Earth’s weather but also radio communications — findings that became vitally important to the federal government as the country entered World War II.
By the middle of the war, Roberts’ solar research was funded entirely by the U.S. government, mostly through its National Bureau of Standards (NBS). That partnership would soon begin shaping Boulder’s future in ways few could have imagined.
As the war ended, Harvard sought a partner to jointly operate the Climax Observatory. The University of Colorado stepped forward, and in 1946 the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) was established. Roberts was named its founding director. Soon after, the observatory’s administrative headquarters moved from Cambridge to Boulder, and CU appointed Roberts to its physics faculty. By 1948, after years in the high country, the Roberts family had settled in Boulder.
Boulder’s first federal labs
A turning point came in late 1949, when the National Bureau of Standards announced it would relocate its Central Radio Propagation Laboratory from Washington, D.C., to Boulder. Roberts’ relationships with NBS leadership, combined with strong local advocacy, proved decisive. When the lab opened in 1954, it became Boulder’s first federal research facility.
The 1950s brought momentum. CU assumed full responsibility for HAO. A new Department of Astro-Geophysics was created, with Roberts at its helm. Boulder was no longer simply a college town — it was becoming a national center for scientific research.
That transformation accelerated in 1958, when the National Academy of Sciences proposed a new national institute of atmospheric research to support a rapidly advancing field. Its governance would rest with a consortium of universities, soon incorporated as the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Roberts was now one of the most respected leaders in atmospheric science. He was appointed president of UCAR, which in 1960 contracted with the National Science Foundation to create the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In that same year, Roberts was unanimously appointed founding director of the new research center.
The Mesa Laboratory and a vision of place
Roberts’ appointment all but ensured the location chosen for NCAR. As he had done with NBS, he worked with state and local leaders to make the case for Boulder. A site on Table Mesa was identified, even though it lay beyond the city’s recently approved “Blue Line,” a voter-approved boundary designed to limit growth by restricting access to city water.
In a striking moment of civic consensus, Boulder voters agreed to amend the Blue Line in 1961 to accommodate NCAR. Nearly 80% voted yes. The state purchased the land and donated it to the National Science Foundation.
Roberts and UCAR selected architect I. M. Pei to design the Mesa Laboratory, insisting it harmonize with the landscape and preserve the site’s natural character. Construction began in 1964. The building, dedicated in 1967, became an icon not only of modern architecture but of Boulder’s commitment to science embedded in place.
A legacy
Roberts led NCAR through its formative years until 1968, while continuing to serve as UCAR’s president until 1973. Under his leadership, the organizations unified a fragmented discipline, expanded global collaboration, and helped move atmospheric science beyond short-term weather forecasting toward long-term climate and Earth-system research.
Numerous awards and honors bestowed upon NCAR, including a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for climate science, reflect achievements tracing back to pivotal decisions made decades earlier.
Roberts’ influence later in his career extended well beyond Boulder. He directed the Aspen Institute’s Program on Food, Climate, and the World’s Future and taught at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute. For decades, he warned of the dangers of human-caused climate change, coauthoring “The Cold and the Dark” with Paul Ehrlich, Carl Sagan and others in 1984.
But perhaps his greatest legacy was cultural. Roberts believed scientists had a responsibility to bridge science and societal interests and to inform and engage in public policy decision-making. He modeled a form of leadership that linked discovery to consequence, knowledge to responsibility, a legacy continued after his death in 1990.
And now
The legacies of Walt Roberts and NCAR, and Boulder’s broader research ecosystem, are threatened today like never before.
The Trump administration has openly targeted NCAR, with senior officials calling for dismantling the lab while citing it as a source of “climate alarmism.” Layoffs last year at NOAA, NREL and other federal labs across Colorado and the nation elevated job uncertainty among employees, prompting untold numbers to take early retirements.
These and similar actions undermining scientific research are not abstract. They diminish research capacity, destroy collaborations not easily reassembled, and erode the nation’s ability to understand and respond to climate, weather and environmental risk. It took generations to build up the life-critical work done in Boulder by NCAR, NOAA and others. How many generations would it take to recover from their dismantling?
Governors, attorneys general, and civic leaders, including Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, are pushing back through litigation and public advocacy. Whether these efforts will do more than slow the damage remains uncertain.
What is certain is that research institutions like NCAR do not emerge by accident. They are the product of sustained public investment, visionary leadership, and an ecosystem of support. Walt Roberts understood that. Boulder embraced it. The question now is whether we can sustain what earlier generations had the vision and dedication to build.