PLEA Network

17 December 2025, SCI AM: Scientists Denounce Trump’s Plan to Kill Crucial Atmospheric Science Center. The U.S. government is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research, jettisoning key climate science projects in the process. The Trump administration is dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), long considered the crown jewel in the U.S.’s earth science infrastructure. Scientists who study climate, weather and other earth sciences have decried the move, first reported by USA Today, as “taking a sledgehammer” to an “iconic” center dedicated to studying our planet.  “NCAR is quite literally our global mothership,” wrote Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy, on Bluesky. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.” The center, based in Boulder, Colo., has become a target because of what Russ Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, described as “climate alarmism” in a statement to USA Today. Weather modeling and supercomputing work also done at the center will be moved to other research hubs, Vought said. Read more here