The White House is moving to dismantle a weather research facility in Colorado, a decision that would not only impact climate science on Earth, but our ability to understand space weather as well.
The National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is currently under threat. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced the administration’s plan to take apart NCAR, referring to it as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” in a December 16 post on X.
The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s war on climate science, which has included proposing cuts to research funding and scrubbing data from government websites.
NCAR was founded more than six decades ago to study Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and climate, but it also performs research on space weather, the Sun’s activity and how it affects Earth’s magnetosphere. Two of NASA’s upcoming heliophysics missions rely on work carried out by NCAR scientists.
Cloudy with a chance of cuts
Earlier this month, NASA chose to advance two heliophysics missions to further understanding of our host star and the stream of charged particles it emits, also known as solar wind.
One of those missions, the Chromospheric Magnetism Explorer, or CMEx, is led by NCAR scientist Holly Gilbert. CMEx is being designed to study the reddish layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the chromosphere, in an effort to understand the origin of solar eruptions and determine the magnetic sources of solar wind, according to NASA.
“These mission concepts, if advanced to flight, will improve our ability to predict solar events that could harm satellites that we rely on every day and mitigate danger to astronauts near Earth, at the Moon, or Mars,” Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement.
The Solar Transition Region Ultraviolet Explorer (STRUVE) is another NCAR-led NASA mission to study the Sun’s chromosphere and corona, expected to launch in 2029 and gather data on the regions where the energy that powers solar storms builds up before being released.
“The chromosphere is a really important part of the solar atmosphere when it comes to storage and release of magnetic energy,” Alfred de Wijn, a scientist at NCAR and STRUVE’s principal investigator, said in a statement. “We know that the magnetic field of the photosphere connects to the heliosphere, but we don’t know how it makes its way through the chromosphere. We’re interested in what’s actually going on in that middle layer and seeing how the magnetic field changes leading up to eruptions.”
What’s Next for NICAR
With the fate of NCAR hanging in limbo, it’s not clear whether the proposed spacecraft will get to observe our host star. Vought’s statement suggested that approved research activities would be taken up by other organizations, but the OMB has not shared how it will make those decisions.
“[R]esearch conducted at NCAR informs our understanding of space weather hazards caused by solar storms and the atmospheric properties of other planets in and beyond our solar system,” American Astronomical Society (AAS) president Dara Norman said earlier this month. “The AAS requests that Congress exercise its oversight authority and investigate the basis for and process of NSF’s decision making about NCAR.”
US lawmakers have supported legislation to reverse the White House’s proposed cuts to scientific research at NASA and other agencies, and face a January 30 deadline to enact spending bills that would settle the issue.
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