UCAR Sues Trump Administration Over Planned Closure of Federally Funded National Center for Atmospheric Research

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its plan to dismantle the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research. In November, the Trump administration declared it was dismantling NCAR, which is located in Boulder, Colorado.

The administration cited NCAR’s contribution to what it calls “climate alarmism” as the reason for dismantling it.

The lawsuit claims the Trump administration is “waging a campaign of retaliation against the State of Colorado” by trying to dismantle NCAR. That effort follows Colorado’s governor refusing to pardon Tina Peters, an official convicted of election interference on President Donald Trump’s behalf. Tina Peters was convicted of tampering with ballots in her county.

She was convicted for tampering with the election results in 2020 on behalf of President Trump. On Friday after the interview was recorded, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis cut Tina Peters’ sentence to make her eligible for parole on June 1.

NCAR carries out atmospheric research and environmental research related to weather, climate, drought, and fires. It studies how the Earth system works, how it moves energy, and the implications for weather and human lives from day-to-day to longer-term planning, Waleed Abdalati said in an interview with Steve Curwood for the public radio program Living on Earth.

The lawsuit argues that dismantling NCAR would threaten national security, public safety, and the economy.

Inside Climate News reported that the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research filed the suit making those claims. Waleed Abdalati is the former NASA chief scientist. He is now a professor and the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“The Arctic is changing more rapidly than other places on Earth,” Abdalati told Curwood. Understanding those processes, he added, helps determine investments, economic opportunities from shrinking ice cover, and the implications of an exposed border historically protected by ice.

Abdalati declined to read the minds of administration officials but noted that many believe the move against NCAR is retaliation.

Colorado has been singled out, he said, because its governor has not pardoned or shown leniency to Peters, whose conviction relates to the administration’s view of the 2020 election. Federal funding for climate and environmental research has faced uncertainty recently, including impacts on Waleed Abdalati’s lab.

That uncertainty has had a tremendous impact on morale, and when morale is low, people don’t function as well as they otherwise would, Abdalati said.

“The removal of a huge percent of the workforce on the federal side, the challenges to grants so funds are not flowing, really takes a toll on our people,” he stated. “People don’t do this work for the glamor or for the money.

““I don’t think there’s alarmism by the scientists at NCAR. They do research and they report, through peer review, what they find. The fact that some of it is or can be alarming doesn’t make the alarm the goal of the work.” — Waleed Abdalati, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Inside Climate News reported that NCAR has assessed the risks and possible responses to the changing climate for decades. Abdalati emphasized that the center does far more than climate work and that dismantling it would compromise a tremendous capability. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is federally funded. Steve Curwood interviewed Waleed Abdalati for the public radio program Living on Earth.”