An Atmospheric River of Denial

In 1942, when the United States fought a fascist Germany in the European theater and Imperial Japan in the Pacific, it turned to expeditious technological developments to redefine modern warfare, including broadening the types of data deemed useful for planning the massive land, sea and air assaults that turned the tide in the Second World War.

Advancements in weather science made weather forecasting a fundamental element of assault strategy and movement logistics, and university meteorological departments exploded in size as military officers were sent to learn the fundamentals of weather science. The identification of a brief window of calm weather during a period of strong storms determined the Allies successful June 6, 1944 landing date at Normandy, aka D-Day. Conversely, a combination of poor decision-making and climate ignorance led to the failure of the Nazi’s mid-year invasion of Russia in 1941. 

Weather has always been a factor in war and people have always understood this, but the studying, interpreting and forecasting of weather patterns to such an intricate degree during World War II was a definitive 20th-century advancement in humanity’s meteorological repertoire. 

Yet the post-war period proved fallow for atmospheric science. When the urgency (and funding) of the war effort receded, few entered the field, and the majority of meteorologists were employed by the federal government as weather forecasters rather than researchers. 

Into the void stepped the National Academy of Sciences, which convened in 1956 to address the state of meteorology, identifying the lack of resources dedicated to solving the sizable and complex atmospheric problems affecting the planet as a significant issue not only for the field itself but for the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Its answer to the problem was to establish the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally funded research and development center headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, sponsored and overseen by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“Almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. Its end is unthinkable.”

Since its founding, the NCAR has been a linchpin in American climate science. Its research aircraft and computer models of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country and world. Two NCAR scientists in the 1970’s, Roland Madden and Paul Julian, discovered the Madden-Julian oscillation, a massive pulse of clouds and rain that circles the globe along the equator every 30 to 60 days, and fundamentally changed the field of meteorology as a result, helping forecasters predict weather patterns months in advance. 

The NCAR’s study of downdrafts in lower atmospheres led to the development of wind shear detection systems that airports still use to this day to avoid the weather-induced aviation accidents that occurred frequently during the 70s and 80s. 

Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, called NCAR  “the beating heart of our field.” Her social media post continues, “Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It’s end,” she says, “is unthinkable.”

Its end is one of our current administration’s unscientific ideological buggaboos rooted in the Project 2025 playbook.

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On December 17th, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, announced on X: “The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country. A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.” Which “entity or location” said vital activities will be moved to has yet to be named.

The dismantling of the NCAR highlights the misaligned incentives informing the White House’s climate policy, and the statements thus far offered by the current administration perfectly exemplify its disinterest in uniting the country around shared values of societal progress, scientific innovation and bipartisan cooperation. Climate change is real, regardless of partisan ideology — decades of research and data from the scientific community mount a much better argument than the one percent of scientists who claim otherwise. The world will survive if the problem isn’t addressed, but our civilization won’t, so why remove a vital component of the nation’s work to understand and address the issue?

Observers think the reason could be as petty as Trump’s ongoing feud with Colorado Governor Jared Polis. Their dispute stems from the case of Tina Peters, a former state election official who was convicted of multiple felonies after she gave Trump supporters unauthorized access to voting machines following the 2020 election. Trump pardoned Peters on December 11, 2025, but Colorado officials countered that presidential pardons do not apply to state crimes. The announcement of the NCAR’s closure, a blow to the state, came six days later. Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett called the facility an “economic and scientific cornerstone.” Joe Neguse, the U.S. House Assistant Minority Leader whose district includes Boulder, agreed, saying that breaking up NCAR would have significant consequences on the state’s economy and status as a science hub.

Trump’s oil-industry entanglements paint another swath of the picture. His energy secretary is Chris Wright, a Colorado native and former CEO of oilfield service company Liberty Energy. He also served on the boards of Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology company, and EMX Royalty Corp., a mineral rights and fracking company. As secretary of energy, Wright has consistently supported the rollback of measures to combat climate change and oversaw the writing of a recent DOE report questioning mainstream climate science. He donated $228,390 to Trump’s joint fundraising committee in 2024.

That number pales in comparison to the $96 million in direct donations given to Trump by the oil and gas industry between January 2023 and November 2024. The seeds watered by that money have already borne fruit. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act decimated renewable energy tax incentives while granting billions in benefits to the oil and gas industry. He ordered the government to start drilling for oil in Alaska on his first day in office. His administration has proposed removing climate regulations on coal and gas power plants. 

All of this is seemingly in-line with Trump’s interest in strengthening America’s oil industry, which is also his stated reason for his interest in Venezuela’s oil resources and the subsequent military pressure he’s put on the country.

This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has targeted environmental work done in states that have been critical of him. Russell Vought announced in early October that the administration would cancel $7.6 billion in grants that supported green energy projects in 16 states, all of which went for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and carbon-capture efforts are all likely to be impacted, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, as are many others which made the United States a significant player in the effort to end climate change.

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Colorado may be the latest state to earn his ire, but closing the NCAR will have a ripple effect that touches much more than the Centennial State. As Pam Knox, Director of the University of Georgia’s Weather Network points out, “…closing (the NCAR) down or splitting it up and farming it out to other agencies would seriously threaten America’s strength in improving weather and climate forecasting, as well as planning for and dealing with weather emergencies like drought, hurricanes, high winds… and floods. Closing the lab would seriously jeopardize our ability to make improvements in hurricane track and intensity forecasting as well as weather forecasting and monitoring of important climate information.”

NCAR is managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of over 130 colleges and universities focused on research and training in climate and related sciences. When CBS Colorado reached out for more information following the administrations’ announced plans for NCAR, it got the following White House statement: “(NCAR) houses the largest federal research program on climate change — serving as the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy.” It continues, “Many of NCAR’s activities veer far from strong or useful science. Under UCAR’s woke direction, NCAR wastes taxpayer funds on frivolous pursuits and ideologies.”

I.M. Pei’s mid-1960s modernist design is inspired by the surrounding cliffs and landscape and uses local sandstone aggregate, with the goal of visually integrating the Mesa Lab with its natural setting. Courtesy of Tim Farley (left). Courtesy of Jon Hurd (right).

The statement goes on to list the NCAR’s project to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into climate research and its research into wind turbines as examples of “frivolous pursuits and ideologies.” Also making the administration’s hit list is the center’s FRAPPÉ experiment, which studies and tracks air pollution in order to, according to the White House, “demonize motor vehicles, oil, and gas operations.” The full statement can be found here.

Turning climate change into a partisan cudgel has tremendously damaged our scientific literacy and our path to an environmentally sustainable planet.

The administration’s public explanations for breaking up NCAR center less on policy concern and more on political messaging. “Left-wing lunacy” is the kind of childish ad-hominem attack one expects from a Monty Python skit, not a statement from the United States government. It’s combative and schismatic, and serves no function other than to insight vexation from one side and self-righteous smugness from the other. “Frivolous pursuits and ideologies” is unsubstantiated. Is wind turbine research useless science? Is there nothing to be gained from dialogue with the Indigenous peoples who have had millennia to observe and understand the environment and climate of the U.S.? 

Turning climate change into a partisan cudgel (to camouflage paid-for policy) has tremendously damaged our scientific literacy and our path to an environmentally sustainable planet. The NCAR, and institutions like it, are instrumental in maintaining an America with a strong foundation in science, not to mention maintaining a competitive edge against China in green energy technology. The continued dismantling of the country’s scientific endeavors will have decades-long consequences that we’re now starting to see in the form of academic exoduses as universities lose federal funding and job instability becomes an increasingly pervasive reality for researchers. Brain drain, in other words. 

The closure of the NCAR and the current administration’s continued disinterest in keeping America at the forefront of scientific research risks leaving the country unprepared for the environmental, economic and scientific challenges that unquestionably await in our future, not to mention the immediate climate challenges the country faces on a daily basis. 

As Governor Polis said in a statement on the facility’s closure: “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families. If these cuts move forward we will lose our competitive advantage against foreign powers and adversaries in the pursuit of scientific discovery.”