One day after Congress passed an appropriations bill without protections for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Science Foundation published a letter asking the scientific community to explain what NCAR does and how it could be dismantled.
The letter, published Jan. 23, reiterated the administration’s intent to “restructure” NCAR, and invited proposals for new public or private ownership of NCAR’s Mesa Laboratory in Boulder. The letter also requested proposals for new management of weather- and space weather-related observational platforms based in Boulder.
NCAR is funded by the NSF, administered by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and employs about 830 people. Its Boulder headquarters includes seven laboratories and a 450-acre site in Table Mesa that was originally purchased by the state of Colorado and donated to NSF. It remains unclear how a breakup of the organization would affect NCAR employees or what privatization of the land could mean for Boulder.
The administration first moved to break up NCAR during a disagreement between Trump and Gov. Jared Polis, after Trump appeared to blame Polis for the incarceration of Tina Peters. Peters was a Republican former Mesa County election official who was sentenced to nine years in prison for allowing unauthorized access to county voting equipment. Trump attempted to pardon her, but the effort failed because she was convicted on state, not federal, charges.
Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet introduced language this month to protect NCAR in the funding bill, but the amendment was voted down.
Hickenlooper had previously expressed hope the amendment would pass, telling Politico, “Most people — whether you’re a Republican or Democrat — if your governor is having a beef with the president, with the White House, you don’t think that should be taken as a way to obliterate a scientific institution and quite possibly destroy all the data that’s been accumulated and inventoried at that point.”
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has falsely characterized NCAR as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” Researchers widely regard NCAR as a preeminent, world-leading scientific institution whose work extends far beyond climate science, encompassing weather forecasting, space weather, atmospheric chemistry and foundational Earth system research relied on globally by governments, universities and emergency managers.
NCAR provides research tools and modeling capacity used worldwide. As a historic winter storm hits the East Coast this weekend, NCAR models are delivering five-minute updates to state transportation departments on road conditions and recommended treatments.
“We’re in touch with NSF to better understand how this process will unfold, and we’re continuing to do our work,” David Hosansky, a spokesman for NCAR, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
The letter appears to leave a path toward privatization of weather forecasting, something the president has previously signaled interest in.
It also asked NCAR’s agency partners and the research community to describe the scope of work currently performed by NCAR, propose alternative ways to manage NCAR activities, identify goals for a restructured center, and flag which activities might be duplicative of work in the public or private sectors.
Scientists have pushed back strongly on the implication that NCAR’s work is redundant, calling it the “global pillar” and “beating heart of our field.”
The letter also signaled interest in narrowing the scope of research conducted at NCAR, with implied cuts to climate science. However, the NSF stated in the letter that it “remains committed to providing world-class infrastructure for weather modeling, space weather research and forecasting, and other critical functions.”
The NSF is soliciting feedback by March 13, according to the letter. Weather and climate scientist Daniel Swain took to BlueSky to strongly urge scientists to provide it.
“I would expect, under present circumstances, perspectives from industry partners will be especially critical, though everyone’s voice is of course important,” he wrote. “It’s hard to know, but I am hearing from multiple sources that there are some in both NSF & at White House who genuinely believe there is little/no industry use for weather & climate models, large ensemble experiments, contiguous and well-maintained data records/supported code.”
Weather forecasters, scientists and advocacy organizations have been calling for NCAR’s protection for weeks, since the administration first announced its intent to dismantle the organization in December.
“The research done at NCAR … enables air quality monitoring, forecasts of droughts and extreme precipitation events, and improved hurricane intensity forecasts,” reads a petition from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Dismantling NCAR would not only undermine scientific research, it would leave people across the nation less prepared for the dangers of weather events worsened by climate change.”
That legacy — how NCAR was built, why Boulder became a global climate science hub, and what could be lost if the institution is dismantled — is explored in a recent Boulder Reporting Lab commentary on founding director Walter Orr Roberts.
Thank you for your great reporting on this.
I’m curious, as a proposed question for future articles, what would be the economic impact of NCAR leaving Boulder or substantially defunded as a future story?
I realize Boulder now has multiple employment pillars from CU to NIST to NOAA to Google to health food industry (and next year Sundance tourism alongside general tourism). But I wonder how things like city tax revenue or housing demand or local business revenues might be impacted of relatively suddenly, 500-700 jobs disappeared from NCAR?
In 2017, CU’s Leeds School of Business produced a detailed report on the economic impact of the labs on Colorado and on the three counties with the most federal investment in research facilities. You can find it on the “CO-LABS” website under the “More” tab at the top of the home page. They determined that the labs directly employed 7,800 people, plus an additional 9,800 indirectly through multiplier effects, and generated a statewide economic impact of $2.6 billion annually.
The report didn’t analyze benefits specific to NCAR. It’s conceivable, though, that losing their 830 jobs and the multiplier effects of that loss could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars in negative economic impact annually.
In 2015 I began writing a trilogy of sci-fi books precisely because NCAR was not promoting strongly enough the dangers of global warming. They were published by 2017. My family and friends confirmed my suspicion that ncar was mostly absent in the media, so as an NCAR senior scientist I wrote the books for young adults. So much for the alarmism accusation.