On Monday, a consortium that oversees the US's premier atmospheric research center announced it was suing the Trump administration over plans to shut it down. The National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, provides a home for interdisciplinary and collaborative research focused on anything atmospheric. Many of the country's leading academic researchers in the field have spent time working there or have been involved in collaborations that involve NCAR.
But all of that is dependent upon government support for the research done there and, back in December, the head of the Office of Management and Budget labeled it woke and “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” calling for it to be broken up. Since then, planning has continued for the dismemberment of NCAR, with everything from its computing facilities to its headquarters building being up for grabs. But now, the group that runs NCAR is fighting back, alleging in a lawsuit that this is all happening simply because President Trump is mad at Colorado and its governor.
The center at risk
NCAR is situated in Boulder, Colorado, and provides a home for a huge range of science, from weather forecasting to climate change to the impact of space weather on the upper atmosphere. The work there is backed by two research aircraft and a supercomputing center to run the weather and climate models. All of that is managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit that represents over 130 individual educational institutions. UCAR helps manage and maintain the facilities and apply for and distribute grant money, and it provides work space for people to pursue collaborative projects at its facilities. Graduate students, post-docs, and faculty may all spend time working at NCAR facilities or using its supercomputing resources as part of specific research projects.
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Source: Ars Technica
