Leaders warn restructuring could undermine US atmospheric science, as supercomputing transfer raises further fears
Plans to transfer a key climate research supercomputer from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to a third-party operator have raised concerns that the restructure will cause “irreparable damage” to US science.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on 12 February that management and operations of its NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center are expected to transition to an external operator – it told RPN that it has offered the University of Wyoming the opportunity to submit a proposal. The facility runs weather and climate research models and is used by around 1,500 researchers from more than 500 universities across the country.
The move follows broader plans by the Trump administration to restructure NCAR, based in Boulder, Colorado, which is funded largely through NSF. In December, Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said the administration would “break up” NCAR, describing it as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”.
In January, NSF launched a request for input from “agency partners and the research community on the scope of work currently performed by NCAR”. However, some experts told Research Professional News they feared decisions were already being implemented.
Carlos Martinez, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said transferring the supercomputing centre was deeply concerning.
“The public was never given a chance to advocate for keeping it at NCAR, despite its vital role,” he said. “We don’t know who this operator is, or how the transition will unfold. The risk is that the new operator may impose paywalls, or operate in ways that disrupt ongoing projects.”
Defence, agriculture and safety
He added that NCAR had “expertly managed this system for years”, ensuring seamless integration with research programmes. “Removing it risks both continuity and quality of operations, which could impact critical weather, climate and space weather research,” he said.
Martinez warned that further breakup of NCAR could disrupt collaborative research across universities and sectors, halting projects that “directly inform national defence, agriculture and public safety”. He urged researchers to respond to NSF’s request for information, which remains open until 13 March, and “advocate for NCAR’s holistic preservation”.
Concerns over fragmentation were echoed in a letter to NSF from seven former NCAR directors serving consecutively from 1986-2018, including James Hurrell, Richard Anthes and Timothy Killeen, who said redistributing the centre’s core functions would threaten “the very heart of American atmospheric science”.
“While we recognise that institutions must periodically evolve, we must be clear: any path that leads to the fragmentation or dismantling of NSF NCAR is fundamentally not in the nation’s interest,” they wrote to acting director of NSF, Brian Stone, in the letter shared with Research Professional News.
The former directors said NCAR plays a critical role in linking fundamental research with operational applications, “providing the foundational intelligence that protects commerce, reduces disaster-related losses, and optimises weather-sensitive industries like energy, insurance and logistics”.
‘Crown jewel’
They warned that dismantling the centre could also damage the scientific workforce by disrupting a major training hub for early career researchers, risking a “lost generation of scientists”.
In the past, NSF had faced challenges maintaining large infrastructure projects, Cole Donovan, associate director for science and technology ecosystem development at the Federation of American Scientists, told RPN. He added that “transitioning NCAR and other infrastructures for organisations better suited to sustaining long-term infrastructure projects isn’t a bad idea”.
However, he added that “there’s no question that losing the centre would hurt American scientific leadership”, and warned that it was unclear whether another organisation could assume NCAR’s role.
“There has been talk about the [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] taking on some of NCAR’s critical functions, but NOAA hasn’t been given funding that would allow that to happen, and it’s not clear that OMB under Vought would allow them to do so,” he said.
Pamitha Weerasinghe, former director of government relations at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which operates NCAR on behalf of NSF, described the centre as the “crown jewel of the earth system sciences”.
He urged NSF to “listen carefully to researchers and the business community before taking steps to restructure NCAR in a way that would marginalise such an important piece of our global economic infrastructure”.