Want to share your perspective about NCAR? The deadline to respond to NSF’s request for information is March 13, 2026. Learn more about how to engage, and what AMS is doing.
On Wednesday, January 29, 2026, hundreds of attendees at the 106th AMS Annual Meeting in Houston crowded into a large conference room for a Breaking News Town Hall. The main focus: the Trump Administration’s plans to “dismantle” the NSF’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Taking to the lectern, Antonio Busalacchi Jr. (president of NCAR’s parent body, UCAR) asked all NCAR employees in the room to stand. Several did, receiving enthusiastic applause. Then Busalacchi asked everyone to stand up who had worked at NCAR in the past, worked with its employees, or used NCAR’s resources and tools.
Almost everyone in the packed room got to their feet.
NCAR, headquartered in the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, has been a linchpin of atmospheric and related sciences since 1960. Understanding hugely complex weather and climate systems requires infrastructure and resources that no single academic (or perhaps even private) institution could support. With funds from the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s 750 staff create and manage programs, cross-institutional networks, and vital, publicly accessible resources that benefit all atmospheric scientists—including Earth observation tools, crucial weather and climate modeling resources, and computing power.
The American Meteorological Society is responding to the potential breakup of NCAR through statements, advocacy, and leveraging the voices of our community and partners. Resources and additional information are compiled here.
“NCAR is a nexus and the intellectual crossroad for the entire community,” Roger Wakimoto, former NCAR director and former AMS president, told AMS Headlines. “It is rare to identify someone in our field who has not spent time in Boulder. The damage to the atmospheric and related sciences community will be difficult to recover from if the potential breakup proceeds. The biggest losers may be the general public, who have greatly benefitted from NCAR’s existence.”
Private sector representatives agree. “NCAR is unique in its role as a forum of collaboration among private-, academic-, and public-sector scientists for weather and climate research,” notes Frank Nutter, retired president of the Reinsurance Association of America. “There is no private-sector alternative. The value of stand-alone research is multiplied by the interaction via NCAR among scientists in the broader weather community. NCAR has served as the threshold for the professional development of today’s and tomorrow’s scientists serving in both the public and private sectors.”
A key date is March 13, the deadline for responding to NSF’s “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) requesting feedback about restructuring NCAR and its facilities.
Former NCAR National Science Foundation program officer Cliff Jacobs submitted one such response, stating that “the collective expertise of the university community, both national and international, along with NCAR, has effectively leveraged a key U.S. strength to benefit society. Fragmenting this approach would weaken American leadership.” He went on to note that NCAR supplies crucial data to partners in the agriculture sector, local chambers of commerce, water utilities, private weather companies, the aerospace industry, and the insurance and financial risk industries. “Eliminating NCAR would cause irreparable harm.”
Others have shared their stories across traditional and social media. Robin Tanamachi of Purdue University researches storms and tornadoes, as well as how to make abstract atmospheric science concepts “real” for students using field work. On Substack, she wrote about her (and her students’) learning experiences with NCAR programs; use of its open-source software, models, and supercomputing and data assimilation resources; and working with NCAR’s Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) as part of her field campaigns. “NCAR supported me as a student and as an early career scientist,” she wrote. “I have always tacitly assumed NCAR will also be there to support my own students with their rich portfolio of data, software, instruments, and programs. It sickens me to think NCAR may not be there for them as it was for me.”
Jack Fellows is former vice president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the congressionally created, 129-university consortium that manages NCAR. In his DCL response letter, he writes that “If a consortium like UCAR were removed as [NCAR] manager, the most likely result would be the breakup of tightly integrated research teams, computing systems, and observation infrastructure — systems that have been built carefully over decades. … Dismantling NCAR outside of a well-thought-out review process and before the current contract ends would put the nation at serious risk. We may never fully recover from this kind of ‘experiment.’ That is a very high price for this country to face.”
Use this form to submit your own story about the impact of NCAR, to be used in ongoing coverage on AMS Headlines and other AMS media.
