A federal judge on Monday temporarily halted a Trump administration effort to target a climate and weather research lab in Colorado.
Judge R. Brooke Jackson, an Obama appointee, blocked the administration from taking away a supercomputer from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in a preliminary ruling.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought announced late last year that the National Science Foundation would “break up” NCAR, saying it was a source of “climate alarmism.”
The foundation, technically an independent agency, then said that it would explore options to “transfer stewardship” of NCAR’s supercomputer to “to an appropriate operator.”
NCAR, based in Boulder, conducts climate research. It also seeks to predict severe weather, model flooding, forecast air quality and look into how the sun’s behavior impacts life on Earth.
After the Trump administration’s moves, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of 129 schools that manages the lab, sued. It alleged that the breakup of the lab was retribution for Colorado’s refusal to give up its authority over elections as well as over its legal actions against former county clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted of election interference.
Jackson, in his order, wrote that in transferring the supercomputer, the science foundation “offered no explanation for its decision” and “failed to abide its own process to consider public feedback before proceeding with the transfer.”
He also wrote that there’s public interest in keeping the supercomputer at the lab, saying it “supports the efficient and uninterrupted data collection that supports more accurate climate-prediction modeling, which in turn is used to mitigate harmful extreme weather events that are a feature of our world.”
“Any degradation in forecasting, modeling, or related scientific capabilities carries real-world consequences, including potential harm to property and human life,” Jackson wrote.
UCAR celebrated the injunction in a written statement.
“Our work supports national security, public safety, and economic prosperity, and any steps made toward divesting NCAR of its high-performance computing facilities would risk disrupting the country’s extraordinary advances in weather and space weather modeling and forecasting, as well as related programs spanning agriculture, water resources, wildfire risk, military support, power grid interruption, and aviation safety,” said UCAR Interim President Eric Barron in a written statement.
“Today’s decision ensures that the [NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center] NWSC will be able to continue its vital work on behalf of the United States and its stakeholders without interruption,” Barron added.
NSF declined to comment. The Hill has also reached out to OMB, as well as the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also named in the suit, for comment.
