Federal Court Halts Trump Administration Plan to Dismantle NCAR

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Colorado : A federal judge in Colorado has temporarily blocked the Donald Trump administration's plans to reorganise and dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a globally significant weather and climate research center.

Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued a preliminary injunction on Monday following a lawsuit filed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the university consortium that manages the facility.

The court order directly halts a federal move by the National Science Foundation to strip UCAR of its stewardship over its high-performance supercomputing center in Wyoming.

Judge Jackson ruled that the federal agency's abrupt decision was arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion under the law. The court highlighted that the administration failed to provide any reasonable explanation for the restructuring and completely bypassed the legal requirements to consider public feedback before executing major structural changes.

The decision halts immediate attempts to break apart the historic institution, which has trained generations of scientists since 1960. By keeping the center intact during the ongoing legal process, the injunction protects critical weather forecasting, space modeling, and climate-prediction systems utilized daily by the international scientific community, federal agencies, and the U.S. military.

Photo Credits: The National Center for Atmospheric Research, above Boulder by Ulysse BELLIER