If you hear mention of NCAR or that the Trump regime or OMB or Russell Vought are defunding or breaking up NCAR, this is the post to read about it. It's by a Houston meteorologist named Matt Lanza.
NCAR is the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and with a name like that, how could the regime not hate it? They claim it's the source of "climate alarmism," but since they think climate change isn't real... we know what that means.
NCAR's research is the backbone of almost every bit of weather or climate research done in the U.S., according to that posts and statements by other scientists (see the BlueSky posts below). Things that make us all safer from severe weather, like the atmospheric rivers that just caused mass flooding in the Pacific Northwest this week. But to the Trump regime, use of the word "climate" = "climate change" = conspiracy.
As Lanza's article says, the regime claims that the "vital" parts of NCAR's work will be distributed to other government entities... but we've seen how that works — or doesn't work — with this administration, and why would that be more efficient anyway?
NCAR is quite literally our global mothership. Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.
Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist
Seen at AGU2025* in New Orleans:
Michael E. Mann
This is an intellectual war crime. NCAR is one of the nation's, and the world's, pre-eminent research institutions.
Peter Gleick, US National Academy of Sciences member, MacArthur Fellow, Carl Sagan Prize winner
An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth
Peter Brannen, science journalist
Key misunderstanding I want to get ahead of: NCAR isn't really a government agency like NIH or NSF. It's one of the largest NSF grants in history, and is given to a nonprofit org called UCAR, whose job is to make NCAR exist. That means the buck stops with NSF right now. This isn't as simple as the government shutting down an agency or an office; there's some program officers at NSF who have been given the order to carry out political interference on one of the most important grants in the country, and there are desperate scientists on the other end of that action.
Colin Carlson, planetary epidemiologist at Yale
I know many of you who follow me don't work in climate science, but this is the biggest story in climate right now. Breaking up NCAR makes us all less safe and is another act of self-harm that will take decades to recover from.
David Ho, climate scientist
The administration dismantling NCAR is scientific vandalism, much like the Taliban demolishing cultural artifacts. Update: it appears this is payback for Colorado’s governor not playing nice with Trump
Andrew Dessler, prof of Atmospheric Sciences and climate scientist, Texas A&M
Unbelievable. This would be a terrible blow to American science, writ large. It would decimate not only climate research, but also the kind of weather, wildfire, and disaster research that has underpinned half a century of progress in prediction, early warning, and increased resilience. Nearly all weather, climate, and natural hazard research involves NCAR in some way—either directly (as is the case with countless affiliated scientists at universities or elsewhere) or indirectly (through use of NCAR's irreplaceable community datasets, predictive models, or its computing facilities).
Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social, weather and climate scientist
This is the fossil fuel industry spray-painting the lens on the security cameras while they carry off the heist
Bill McKibben
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*AGU is the American Geophysical Union, which is meeting in New Orleans as I post this.
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