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Trump team ‘breaking up’ top climate research center
By Robin Bravender | 12/17/2025
The White House says it’s targeting the “premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy.”
The White House plans to break up a major scientific research center as the Trump administration continues its quest to obliterate federal climate change programs.
The National Science Foundation will be “breaking up” the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought posted on social media Tuesday.
He called the facility one of the “largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said any “vital activities” done by the research center — “such as weather research” — will be moved to another entity or location.
The announcement is the latest move by the Trump administration to target federal work on climate change, which President Donald Trump has forcefully derided as a scam. The Trump administration is also working to wipe out the long-standing government finding that underpins federal climate regulations, and officials have axed federal funding for climate and renewable energy programs they have labeled as part of a “Green New Scam.”
The Trump administration views the research center as a prime target as it aims to yank federal support for climate change research. Trump’s critics, meanwhile, said they were shocked by the announcement and warned the plans will devastate U.S. climate research.
Details of the administration’s plans to restructure the research center weren’t immediately clear.
The National Science Foundation established the center in 1960. The federally funded research center is managed by a nonprofit consortium of more than 120 colleges and universities. It’s headquartered in Boulder and has additional facilities in Wyoming and Hawaii.
The center “houses the largest federal research program on climate change — serving as the premier research stronghold for left-wing climate lunacy,” said a senior White House official granted anonymity to speak freely.
The National Science Foundation will “eliminate Green New Scam research activities,” the White House official said. “Any vital functions, such as weather modeling and supercomputing, will be moved under the purview of another entity or location. Parts of the lab may be moved to another entity.”
The National Science Foundation on Wednesday posted a brief announcement on its website that it is “reviewing the structure” of the research center. NSF “remains committed to providing world-class infrastructure for weather modeling, space weather research and forecasting, and other critical functions,” the agency said.
USA Today first reported the news of the administration targeting the research center.
‘Destruction of knowledge’
The Trump administration’s plans prompted an outcry from Colorado’s Democratic governor and scientists who warn the move will dramatically curtail domestic climate research.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) issued a statement Tuesday saying that his state had “yet to receive information” about the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the “global leader in earth system science.”
Climate change “is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” Polis said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
Vought on Tuesday reposted news stories on his social media account detailing how the Trump administration was targeting funding for other Colorado projects. Those detailed the cancellation of environmentally focused transportation grants and a move to halt Energy Department funding slated for the state.
In response to a question Wednesday about the plans to break up the Colorado climate research center, the senior White House official said, “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump, his constituents would be better served.”
Michael Mann, director of Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, said defunding the research center “very much undermines the United States’ standing when it comes to the advancement of climate science.”
The center “has played a key role in developing the science of climate modeling and the measurement of climate observations going back more than a half-century,” added Mann. The Trump administration’s move is “symbolic of the actual destruction of knowledge,” he said.
A video on the research center’s website on Wednesday says it’s working to address “the most pressing environmental challenges facing our nation and the world, from more intense hurricanes and larger wildfires to deepening droughts and rising seas.” The center says it’s “building on decades of research breakthroughs that have significantly improved the ability to predict severe weather and detail the consequences of climate change.”
Carlos Martinez, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists who served as an early career researcher at the center, was in “complete shock” over the announcement, he said Tuesday in a statement.
Dismantling the center “would impact every earth science and atmospheric science university department in the country,” Martinez said. Its research “influences every piece of weather and climate prediction in the United States, enabling air quality monitoring, forecasting of droughts and extreme precipitation events, and improving hurricane intensity forecasts.”
Eliminating that work, Martinez said, “would leave people across the nation less prepared for the dangers of a warming world.”
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Trump Administration to Dismantle Key Climate Research Center in Colorado – Mother Jones
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This story was originally published by theGuardian and is reproduced here as part of the*Climate Desk*collaboration.}:
The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.
Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.
“This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” he wrote in a social media post. “A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”
The announcement was the latest in a series of climate-skeptic moves by the administration, which has vowed to eliminate what it calls “green new scam research activities.”
It drew fierce condemnation from climate experts, who said the Colorado center was renowned for advances in the study of weather patterns, including tropical cyclones.
Roger Pielke Jr, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank, told *USA Today*, which first reported the story, that the facility was “a crown jewel of the US scientific enterprise and deserves to be improved not shuttered.”
He added: “If the US is going to be a global leader in the atmospheric sciences, then it cannot afford to make petty and vindictive decisions based on the hot politics of climate change.”
The move was also criticized by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, who said it put “public safety at risk.”
“Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science,” he said. “NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The center employs approximately 830 staff and includes the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, which Vought said would be shut. It also operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a government-owned supercomputing facility in Wyoming.
The decision to dismantle it is consistent with Donald Trump’s frequent characterisations of climate change as a “con job” or a “hoax.”
The White House has accused the centre of following a “woke direction” and identified several projects that administration officials say are wasteful and frivolous, USA Today reported.
These include a Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences that seeks to “make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered,” as well as research into wind turbines, an innovation that Trump has repeatedly denounced.
The administration has already proposed a 30 percent cut to the funding of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, slashing spending on its climate, weather and ocean laboratories, which work to improve forecasting and better understand weather patterns.
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