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The White House is considering dismantling a weather research center in Colorado, a move that would not only impact climate science on Earth, but also our ability to understand space weather.
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 dismantle NCAR, calling it “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” in a Dec. 16 statement. job on X.
The move is the latest in the Trump administration’s war on climate science, which has included proposed cuts to research funding and removal of data from government websites.
NCAR was founded more than sixty years ago to study Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and climate, but it also conducts research on space weather, the activity of the Sun, and its impact on Earth’s magnetosphere. Two of NASA’s upcoming heliophysics missions build on work conducted by NCAR scientists.
Cloudy with risk of cuts
Earlier this month, NASA chose to advance two heliophysics missions to better understand our host star and the flow of charged particles it emits, also known as the solar wind.
One of these missions, Chromospheric Magnetism Explorer, or CMEx, is led by NCAR scientist Holly Gilbert. CMEx is designed to study the reddish layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the chromosphere, with the goal of understanding the origin of solar flares and determining the magnetic sources of the solar wind, according to NASA.
“These mission concepts, if advanced in flight, will improve our ability to predict solar events that could damage the satellites we rely on every day and mitigate the danger to astronauts near Earth, on the Moon or on Mars,” Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement. statement.
The Solar Transition Region Ultraviolet Explorer (STRUVE) is another NCAR-led NASA mission to study the chromosphere and the Sun’s corona, scheduled to launch in 2029 and to collect data on regions where the energy that fuels solar storms accumulates before being released.
“The chromosphere is a very important part of the solar atmosphere with respect to the storage and release of magnetic energy,” Alfred de Wijn, NCAR scientist and principal investigator of STRUVE, said in a report. 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 are interested in what is actually happening in this middle layer and see how the magnetic field changes before flares.”
What’s next for NICAR
With the fate of NCAR up in the air, it is unclear whether the proposed spacecraft will be able to observe our host star. Vought’s statement suggested that approved research activities would be taken up by other organizations, but OMB did not indicate how it would make those decisions.
“[R]Research 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,” Dara Norman, president of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). said earlier this month. “The AAS calls on Congress to exercise its oversight authority and investigate the basis and process of NSF decision-making regarding the NCAR.”
U.S. lawmakers have backed legislation to reverse proposed White House budget cuts to scientific research at NASA and other agencies, and face a Jan. 30 deadline to pass spending bills that would address the problem.
