Climate research center threatened with cuts sues Trump administration

Denver, Colorado

In one of the most high-profile battles yet between the U.S. research community and President Donald Trump’s administration, lawyers clashed yesterday in a Colorado courthouse over the future of a research center that has been called the global “mothership” of climate science.

Under Trump, the US government said it would take steps to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. claiming it promotes climate alarmism. The organization that runs NCAR – a coalition of about 130 universities called the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) – sued the government in March to prevent NCAR’s dissolution.

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Researchers say NCAR is a crucial global resource whose models underpin much of modern atmospheric science, including artificial intelligence studies aimed at decoding and predicting extreme weather. “Losing the NCAR would mean losing decades of institutional knowledge, something that cannot be restored in two, four, or even ten years,” says Angeline Pendergrass, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Legal action

At the heart of the legal struggle is the question of whether United States National Science Foundation (NSF)which provides the bulk of NCAR’s funding through a contract with UCAR, is moving too quickly and without authorization to turn over elements of NCAR — including a supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming — to public and private institutions.

A lawyer representing the NSF argued in court that no final decision had been made; an NSF spokesperson said Nature that he had nothing else to add.

Documents revealed in the UCAR trial show that last November, the White House Budget Office directed the NSF to begin restructuring NCAR to align the center’s mission “more closely with the administration’s priorities.” The news became public in December. In January, the NSF requested proposals for how NCAR should be revamped, including a request for public comment by March 13. But the documents show that well before that deadline, on Feb. 12, NSF told NCAR officials that the agency had already decided to transfer management of its supercomputing center elsewhere. “It’s remarkably fast for an important decision like this,” says Carlos Javier Martinez, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On April 3, UCAR asked a U.S. district court judge to freeze the proposed sale of the supercomputing center. “This is a sham process,” Michael Purpura, an attorney with the Hueston Hennigan law firm in Newport Beach, Calif., argued on behalf of UCAR at the May 7 hearing.

Representing the NSF, attorney Marianne Kies argued that despite the steps taken so far, the agency has not made any decisions about the future of the supercomputing center or the rest of NCAR. “A final decision has not been made regarding the transfer of management,” said Kies, who works with the US Department of Justice in Washington DC. “It’s not that the NSF hasn’t followed procedure, it’s just that the need to follow procedure hasn’t been triggered yet.”

The judge, R. Brooke Jackson, of the U.S. District Court in Colorado, told both sides he would issue a ruling “as quickly as possible.” If he decides in favor of the NSF, the process of transferring the supercomputing center will continue. If he decides in favor of UCAR, this transfer will probably be suspended until the parties find another arrangement. Whatever the decision, the broader battle over the future of NCAR — including its aircraft fleet, space weather studies and climate modeling teams — will likely continue to play out.

Scientists and others who use NCAR data may see “ripple effects” caused by current uncertainty, particularly on weather forecasts and the people who depend on them, says Amanda Staudt, executive director of the American Mogenic Society in Boston, Massachusetts. “Major changes like those proposed by the NSF can be very disruptive. »

An uncertain future

The NSF established NCAR in 1960 at the request of American universities that wanted a joint center for atmospheric research but did not have the resources to support such a center themselves. NCAR currently operates under a five-year, $938 million contract between UCAR and NSF that ends in 2028.

Members of the U.S. Congress from Colorado have tried to prevent any attempt to dismantle the NCAR, but have so far been unsuccessful. One possible strategy could be for Congress, which controls government spending, to add provisions in upcoming funding legislation directing the NSF to keep the NCAR intact.

At the hearing, UCAR argued that NCAR had already suffered substantial harm in the form of a “brain drain.” Scientists left the atmospheric research center due to uncertainty about its future. Kies, representing the government, argued that such departures were premature because no “final agency action” had been taken.

The leading candidate to take over the supercomputing center is the University of Wyoming in Laramie, which is already partnering with NCAR to manage the facility. The center includes a supercomputer named Derecho, which began operations in 2023. Since then, it has been used to study phenomena such as the spread of wildfires and severe storms.

It’s “puzzling” that the NSF is investing millions of dollars in a new supercomputer in 2023, around the same time the agency renewed UCAR’s contract, demonstrating its confidence in the consortium, Martinez says. “And now we’re seeing all this change,” he adds. “This begs the question of why?”

This article is reproduced with permission and has been published for the first time May 8, 2026.