The mid-December an-nouncement that the Trump administration intends to close the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder has been met with fierce protest. Sen. Michael Bennet says he is committed to keeping NCAR open, and hundreds gathered on Dec. 20 in Boulder to publicly express their opposition to the move.
In his announcement of the closure, Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, called NCAR “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said that any “vital activities, such as weather research,” would be “moved to another entity or location” following a “comprehensive review.”
Vought’s announcement comes after cuts to funding and positions by the Trump administration at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which includes the National Weather Service (NWS). NOAA’s Boulder office building is home to one of the NWS’ 122 local forecast offices.
To help get through the acronym and political jungle to understand the impact of a potential closure, the Intermountain Jewish News spoke with a scientist familiar with both NCAR and NOAA who has worked in space physics and planetary science for over two decades. Recently retired, the Denver-based scientist is still actively working in the field and applying for grants and has requested anonymity.
The two research institutions support each other’s work but are distinct. NCAR, which focuses on atmospheric and weather research, is federally funded but independently run; NOAA is a government agency that undertakes research but focuses on public-facing services, including daily weather forecasts, watches and warnings. In addition, NOAA provides forecasts for seafarers, commercial air travel and numerous other environmental hazards.
The two institutes, together with the University of Colorado, have made Boulder a center of federal scientific research on weather for over 70 years. Shutting down NCAR could have negative effects not only on Boulder but across the country and globally.
The impacts of atmospheric research may not be immediately clear to individuals, but due to the work of NCAR and NOAA, weather forecasting has improved fivefold since 1980, the scientist says. A five-day forecast in 2026 has the same accuracy level that a 1980 forecast would have had only for the following day.
Larger weather patterns and trends being mapped and predicted have an enormous impact far beyond an individual deciding on a beach or indoor day.
Commercial impacts include agriculture, where forecasting can help ensure adequate crop yields and minimize unstable food pricing. Readers of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series will be familiar with unexpected storms wiping out crops — and a year’s worth of income — for homesteaders.
If farmers know of potentially damaging weather events, alternative plans can be made to minimize the impact. “That can be hundreds of millions of dollars per day,” the researcher says, when crops are planted at the optimal time for growth.
Better knowledge of the weather also saves lives. In 1980 a tornado warning gave around three minutes to seek shelter; today it averages 13-14 minutes. Understanding when and where it is safe to land a plane due to turbulence or high winds is all underpinned by NCAR and NOAA research, the expert says, and continued atmospheric research would only advance forecasting further. Progress in this complex field is inherently slow, requiring continuity of funding and expertise. Curtailing or worse, a shutdown, would disrupt not only current research projects but the entire atmospheric research ecosystem.
When people lose their jobs, they find a different job or a different path. It’s not simple to bring them back together if a closure or layoffs are reversed.
“These are individual people who have made individual professional connections and developed research programs that are key to advance of our understanding of the weather. That takes a long time to reassemble.” Disrupting the continuity of research and the balance among NCAR, NOAA and CU Boulder also risks “losing a generation of new scientists.”
The scientist, who has worked in the past for the federal government, says that change comes any time there is a new administration. “It’s a question of the magnitude and the direction of the change and whether it may have a negative impact on the science . . . Sometimes it’s a shift in emphasis more toward practical forecasting instead of research.”
While cautioning against drawing conclusions about what a closure of NCAR or a change to its research mission might look like, the researcher says the wording for some of the changes being suggested now is “pretty scary.”
“There seems to be a general — and unjustified — sentiment right now in society that is moving toward more skepticism of science and the scientific method.”
In the OMB’s announcement, the Trump administration accused NCAR of climate activism, but the scientist says that in his experience working at different institutions, “It’s about the work. It’s not about someone’s personal belief systems . . . from a day-to-day working level perspective, politics really doesn’t play a role, facts and evidence do. The simple fact is that weather and climate — longer term weather trends — are not separable areas of study, they are two sides of the same coin.”
Layoffs are concerning because of people’s livelihoods, but the expert emphasizes that these are people dedicated to “understanding the basic science and serving the public through that basic science.”
A closure, the scientist says, “strikes at their core values . . . They recognize the importance of atmospheric research for a safe and productive society. So, it hurts in that way as well.”
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