Dire Impacts of Dismantling NCAR and a Look Back at its Founder: Walter Orr Roberts
- Clif Harald
- 8 minutes ago
- 2 min read
The following excerpts are from two stories about the Trump adminis-tration’s plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) federal laboratory in Boulder. They were published in the Boulder Reporting Lab in January and February 2026. Links are provided to each full story.
In December 2025, the Trump administration issued a directive to “break up” Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), labeling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” Dismantling NCAR could dangerously disrupt scientific research that advances our ability to predict and often mitigate the life-threatening risks of extreme weather in a changing climate. That work is not climate alarmism. It is climate realism, grounded in decades of evidence and paid for many times over in lives saved and losses avoided. Continue reading…
Eighty-six years ago, a young astronomer arrived in the Colorado mountains to study the sun. Walter Orr Roberts, known to most as Walt Roberts, would rise to become the single most influential figure in Boulder’s emergence as a world leader in atmospheric and Earth-system science. As the founding director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the leader of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Roberts did more than conduct science. He built the partnerships, institutions and culture that allowed an entire field to flourish.
He could not have known when he moved to Colorado in 1940 that his work would help transform Boulder into a global center of scientific research. Nor that the institutions he built would one day face threats to their very existence from a sitting U.S. president — threats that now challenge the future of Boulder’s research ecosystem. Continue reading…
*Copyright University Corporation for Atmospheric Research under CC BY-NC 4.0