What impact has President Trump had on climate change policy so far?
Since taking office, President Trump has abandoned efforts to curb global warming. “It may take more than a generation to repair the damage.”
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is moving to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and is targeting one of the world’s leading climate institutes, according to a senior White House official.
Trump officials have accused the federally funded research institute, based in Boulder, Colorado, of being a center of “federal climate alarmism” after it was established decades ago in 1960 to research atmospheric chemistry and physical meteorology.
In an upcoming review of the center, the White House said the administration will identify and eliminate so-called “new green fraud research activities,” while “critical capabilities” such as weather modeling and supercomputing will be moved to other organizations and locations. The White House billed the reorganization as a return to NCAR’s original focus.
“The National Science Foundation will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said in a statement to USA TODAY. “This facility is one of the largest contributors to climate change in the country. A comprehensive review is underway and critical activities such as climate research will be moved to another organization or location.”
The official said efforts to disband NCAR will begin immediately, with plans to permanently close the center’s Mesa Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
The announcement comes after President Donald Trump forced major cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including abolishing the agency’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and cutting off funding to its Climate, Meteorology, and Ocean Research Institute and its partner institutes.
NCAR’s staff consists of approximately 830 employees who are part of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), a nonprofit consortium of more than 130 universities focused on Earth system science research and training. It’s unclear how many jobs and programs the demolition could affect.
The National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency, contracts with a consortium of universities to manage the center. NSF provided NCAR with $123 million in fiscal year 2025, accounting for about half of the center’s budget, according to Science.
In addition to the Mesa Institute, NCAR operates two aircraft for atmospheric research and manages a federally owned supercomputing center in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The White House noted “UCAR’s woke direction” and cited several efforts that Trump officials called wasteful and frivolous.
Programs flagged include the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, which aims to “make science more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered.” An art series that aims to build “our relationship with water through recycled materials, photography, oil paintings, and other media.” and wind turbine research that aims to “deeper understand and predict the effects of weather conditions and climate change on offshore wind power generation.”
President Trump regularly calls climate change a “hoax” or “the work of con artists,” even though the majority of scientists believe climate change is real and are sounding the alarm about rising temperatures.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2024 was the hottest year on record, and the ocean’s surface layer was also the hottest on record.
The move to dismantle NCAR comes after the Trump administration earlier in the day announced the cancellation of Colorado’s $109 million green-focused transportation grant aimed at promoting research into electric vehicles, rail improvements, and trains powered by hydrogen and natural gas.
President Trump harshly criticized Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis over the state’s jailing of Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted on multiple charges of having access to secure voting system data to prove a baseless conspiracy to deny the 2020 election.
President Trump last week called Polis an “incompetent” governor and a “weak, pathetic man.”
